Love passed me by, nor touched my brow; Life would not yield one perfect boon; And all too late it calls me now-- O, all too late, and all too soon. If thou couldst the dark riddle read Which leaves this dart within my breast, Then might I think thou lov'st indeed, Then were the whole to thee confest. Father, they will not take me home; To the poor child no heart is free; In sleet and snow all night I roam; Father, was this decreed by thee? I will not try another door, To seek what I have never found; Now, till the very last is o'er, Upon the earth I'll wander round. I will not hear the treacherous call That bids me stay and rest a while, For I have found that, one and all, They seek me for a prey and spoil. They are not bad; I know it well; I know they know not what they do; They are the tools of the dread spell Which the lost lover must pursue. In temples sometimes she may rest, In lonely groves, away from men, There bend the head, by heats distressed, Nor be by blows awoke again. Nature is kind, and God is kind; And, if she had not had a heart, Only that great discerning mind, She might have acted well her part. But O this thirst, that nought can fill, Save those unfounden waters free! The angel of my life must still And soothe me in eternity! It marks the defect in the position of woman that one like Mariana should have found reason to write thus. To a man of equal power, equal sincerity, no more!--many resources would have presented themselves. He would not have needed to seek, he would have been called by life, and not permitted to be quite wrecked through the affections only. But such women as Mariana are often lost, unless they meet some man of sufficiently great soul to prize them. Van Artevelde's Elena, though in her individual nature unlike my Mariana, is like her in a mind whose large impulses are disproportioned to the persons and occasions she meets, and which carry her beyond those reserves which mark the appointed lot of woman. But, when she met Van Artevelde, he was too great not to revere her rare nature, without regard to the stains and errors of its past history; great enough to receive her entirely, and make a new life for her; man enough to be a lover! But as such men come not so often as once an age, their presence should not be absolutely needed to sustain life. SUNDAY MEDITATIONS ON VARIOUS TEXTS. MEDITATION FIRST. "And Jesus, answering, said unto them, Have faith in God."--_Mark_ xi. 22. O, direction most difficult to follow! O, counsel most mighty of import! Beauteous harmony to the purified soul! Mysterious, confounding as an incantation to those yet groping and staggering amid the night, the fog, the chaos of their own inventions!