To your sweet vision. There I stand Transfigured fair in love's deceit, And while your soul looks up to mine, My heart lies at your feet. Believe me better than my best, And stronger than my strength can hold, Until your magic faith transmute My pebbles into gold. I'll _be_ the thing you hold me, Dear!-- After I 'm dead, if not before-- Nor, through the climbing ages, will I give the conflict o'er. But if upon the Perfect Peace, And past the thing that was, and is, And past the lure of voices, in A world of silences, A pain can crawl--a little one-- A cloud upon a sunlit land; I think in Heaven my heart must ache That you should understand. A NEW FRIEND. The sun is sinking on the sacred lands Wherein the grain ungarnered beckoning stands. Who loses never finds, nor can, nor may, The common, human glory of the day. Close, let us enter, tear-blind as we must; Reapers, not gleaners of a solemn trust. AN ETCHING. A true knight! Knowing neither worldly fear, Nor yet reproach of her unworldly faith; Fine eyes shall see, yet see not, on this page, A man, who from a woman's heart of hearts Could earn, and keep, the sacred name of Friend. TO MY FATHER. Tired with the little follies of the day, A child crept, sobbing, to your arms to say Her evening prayer; and if by God or you Forgiven and loved, she never asked or knew. With life's mistake and care too early old, And spent with sorrow upon sorrow told, She finds the father's heart the surest rest; The earliest love shall be the last and best. THE GATES BETWEEN. Pearl-white, opaque and fixed fast, Flashing between the hands unclasped, Blinding between despairing eyes, The awful Gates shut to, at last, On comfort snatched, and anguish done, On every moan beneath the sun, Till we and ours, and joy are one. This is your hour, Gates of God, Your solemn hour, bars of gold, But there shall come another yet. Like silken sails you shall be furled, Like melting mist you shall be set. Oh, ye the dearest! vanished from Love's little inner, sheltered spot. To ye I whisper; not forgot, But loved the dearer, namèd not. Across the barrier old as life, Lean to us from the Silent World. A PRAYER. VESPERS. Great God! Behold, I lie Beneath Thine awful eye, As the sea beneath the sky. My God, What hope abides? Thine unknown purpose rides The torrent of my tides. Dear God, I am not a shore, or hill, An ocean must take still The colors of the heavens' will. Choose, God. Though days be blue, or gold, Though sorrows new, or cold, Though purple joy be there, Or gray of old despair, Give but Thyself to me, And let me be Thy sea. Thy storms have had their way. I pray now not to pray. Writings of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps