So that one sad day, O loss, O sorrow! The sweet creature left you all alone; 'Twas your own hand hung the cage door open, Mother, and your pretty bird is flown. BP. ALEXANDER. EPITAPH. _("Il vivait, il jouait.")_ [Bk. III. xv., May, 1843.] He lived and ever played, the tender smiling thing. What need, O Earth, to have plucked this flower from blossoming? Hadst thou not then the birds with rainbow-colors bright, The stars and the great woods, the wan wave, the blue sky? What need to have rapt this child from her thou hadst placed him by-- Beneath those other flowers to have hid this flower from sight? Because of this one child thou hast no more of might, O star-girt Earth, his death yields thee not higher delight! But, ah! the mother's heart with woe for ever wild, This heart whose sovran bliss brought forth so bitter birth-- This world as vast as thou, even _thou_, O sorrowless Earth, Is desolate and void because of this one child! NELSON K. TYERMAN. ST. JOHN. _("Un jour, le morne esprit.")_ [Bk. VI. vii., Jersey, September, 1855.] One day, the sombre soul, the Prophet most sublime At Patmos who aye dreamed, And tremblingly perused, without the vast of Time, Words that with hell-fire gleamed, Said to his eagle: "Bird, spread wings for loftiest flight-- Needs must I see His Face!" The eagle soared. At length, far beyond day and night, Lo! the all-sacred Place! And John beheld the Way whereof no angel knows The name, nor there hath trod; And, lo! the Place fulfilled with shadow that aye glows Because of very God. NELSON R. TYERMAN. THE POET'S SIMPLE FAITH. You say, "Where goest thou?" I cannot tell, And still go on. If but the way be straight, It cannot go amiss! before me lies Dawn and the Day; the Night behind me; that Suffices me; I break the bounds; I _see_, And nothing more; _believe_, and nothing less. My future is not one of my concerns. PROF. E. DOWDEN. I AM CONTENT. _("J'habite l'ombre.")_ [1855.] True; I dwell lone, Upon sea-beaten cape, Mere raft of stone; Whence all escape Save one who shrinks not from the gloom, And will not take the coward's leap i' the tomb. My bedroom rocks With breezes; quakes in storms, When dangling locks Of seaweed mock the forms Of straggling clouds that trail o'erhead Like tresses from disrupted coffin-lead. Upon the sky Crape palls are often nailed With stars. Mine eye Has scared the gull that sailed To blacker depths with shrillest scream, Still fainter, till like voices in a dream.