From depth and height by measurers left immense, Through sound and shape and colour, comes the unsure Vague utterance, fitful with supreme suspense. All that may pass, and all that must endure, Song speaks not, painting shews not: more intense And keen than these, art wakes with music’s lure Soul within sense. CHANGE. BUT now life’s face beholden Seemed bright as heaven’s bare brow With hope of gifts withholden But now. From time’s full-flowering bough Each bud spake bloom to embolden Love’s heart, and seal his vow. Joy’s eyes grew deep with olden Dreams, born he wist not how; Thought’s meanest garb was golden; But now! A BABY’S DEATH. I. A LITTLE soul scarce fledged for earth Takes wing with heaven again for goal Even while we hailed as fresh from birth A little soul. Our thoughts ring sad as bells that toll, Not knowing beyond this blind world’s girth What things are writ in heaven’s full scroll. Our fruitfulness is there but dearth, And all things held in time’s control Seem there, perchance, ill dreams, not worth A little soul. II. The little feet that never trod Earth, never strayed in field or street, What hand leads upward back to God The little feet? A rose in June’s most honied heat, When life makes keen the kindling sod, Was not so soft and warm and sweet. Their pilgrimage’s period A few swift moons have seen complete Since mother’s hands first clasped and shod The little feet. III. The little hands that never sought Earth’s prizes, worthless all as sands, What gift has death, God’s servant, brought The little hands? We ask: but love’s self silent stands, Love, that lends eyes and wings to thought To search where death’s dim heaven expands. Ere this, perchance, though love know nought, Flowers fill them, grown in lovelier lands, Where hands of guiding angels caught The little hands. IV. The little eyes that never knew Light other than of dawning skies, What new life now lights up anew The little eyes? Who knows but on their sleep may rise Such light as never heaven let through To lighten earth from Paradise? No storm, we know, may change the blue Soft heaven that haply death descries No tears, like these in ours, bedew The little eyes. V. Was life so strange, so sad the sky, So strait the wide world’s range, He would not stay to wonder why Was life so strange? Was earth’s fair house a joyless grange Beside that house on high Whence Time that bore him failed to estrange? That here at once his soul put by All gifts of time and change, And left us heavier hearts to sigh ‘Was life so strange?’ VI.