Alone thou marrest the joy of the day.

Thou but recently hadst encircled the sky,

When sternly the lightning was winding about thee.

Thou gavest forth mysterious thunder,

Thou hast watered with rain the parched earth.

Enough; hie thyself. Thy time hath passed.

The earth is refreshed, and the storm hath fled,

And the breeze, fondling the leaves of the trees,

Forth chases thee from the quieted heavens.

14. Observe, here the poet has no ultimate end but that of giving expression to the overflowing sense of beauty which comes over the soul as he beholds the last remnant of a thunder-storm floating off into airy nothingness. But it is a beauty which ever since the days of Noah and his rainbow has filled the human soul with marvelling and fearing adoration. Beautiful, then, in a most noble sense this poem indeed is. Still, I cannot but consider the following few lines to the Birdlet, belonging as the poem does to the same class with "The Cloud," as still superior.

THE BIRDLET.

God's birdlet knows

Nor care nor toil;

Nor weaves it painfully

An everlasting nest;

Through the long night on the twig it slumbers;

When rises the red sun,

To the voice of God listens birdie,

And it starts and it sings.

When spring, nature's beauty,

And the burning summer have passed,

And the fog and the rain

By the late fall are brought,

Men are wearied, men are grieved;

But birdie flies into distant lands,

Into warm climes, beyond the blue sea, -

Flies away until the spring.

15. For a poem of this class this is a veritable gem; for not only is its theme a thing of beauty, but it is a thing of tender beauty. Who is there among my hearers that can contemplate this birdlet, this wee child of God, as the poet hath contemplated it, and not feel a gentleness, a tenderness, a meltedness creep into every nook and corner of his being? But the lyric beauty of the form, and the tender emotion roused in our hearts by this poem, form by no means its greatest merit. To me the well-nigh inexpressible beauty of these lines lies in the spirit which shineth from them, - the spirit of unreserved trust in the fatherhood of God. "When fog and rain by the late fall are brought, men are wearied, men are grieved, but birdie - " My friends, the poet has written here a commentary on the heavenly words of Christ, which may well be read with immeasurable profit by our wiseacres of supply-and-demand economy, and the consequence-fearing Associated or Dissociated Charity. For if I mistake not, it was Christ that uttered the strangely unheeded words, "Be not anxious for the morrow.... Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feedeth them." Fine words these, to be read reverently from the pulpit on Sunday, but to be laughed at in the counting-room and in the charity-office on Monday. But the singer was stirred by this trustfulness of birdie, all the more beautiful because unconscious, and accordingly celebrates it in lines of well-nigh unapproachable tenderness and grace!

16. There is, however, one realm of creation yet grander and nobler than that visible to the eye of the body. Higher than the visible stands the invisible; and when the soul turns from the contemplation of the outward universe to the contemplation of the inward universe, to the contemplation of affection and aspiration, its flight must of necessity be higher. Hence the high rank of those strains of song which the soul gives forth when stirred by affection, by love to the children of God, whether they be addressed by Wordsworth to a butterfly, by Burns to a mouse, or by Byron to a friend. You have in English eight brief lines which for this kind of song are a model from their simplicity, tenderness, and depth.

LINES IN AN ALBUM.

As over the cold, sepulchral stone

Some name arrests the passer-by,

Thus when thou viewest this page alone

May mine attract thy pensive eye.

And when these lines by thee are read

Perchance in some succeeding year,

Reflect on me as on the dead,