What slighter things dare not endure

Will make our Love more safe

and pure.

Love shall be purified by Pain, And Pain be soothed by Love

again :

So let us now take heart and go Cheerfully on, through joy and woe;

No change the summer sun can bring,

Or the inconstant skies of spring, Or the bleak winter's stormy weather,

For we shall meet them, Love, together!

THE PILGRIMS.

THE way is long and dreary,
The path is bleak and bare;
Our feet are worn and weary,
But we will not despair.
More heavy was Thy burden,
More desolate Thy way;
O Lamb of God who takest
The sin of the world away,

Have mercy on us.

The snows lie thick around us In the dark and gloomy night; And the tempest wails above us, And the stars have hid their light;

But blacker was the darkness Round Calvary's Cross that

O Lamb of God who takest The sin of the world away, Have mercy on us.

Our hearts are faint with sorrow,
Heavy and hard to bear;
For we dread the bitter morrow,
But we will not despair:
Thou knowest all our anguish,
And Thou wilt bid it cease,
O Lamb of God who takest
The sin of the world away,
Give us Thy Peace!

INCOMPLETENESS.

NOTHING resting in its own completeness

Can have worth or beauty: but alone

Because it leads and tends to further sweetness,

Fuller, higher, deeper than its

own.

Spring's real glory dwells not in the meaning, Gracious though it be, of her blue hours;

But is hidden in her tender leaning

To the Summer's richer wealth of flowers.

Dawn is fair, because the mists fade slowly Into Day, which floods the world with light;

Her battlements and towers,

From off their rocky steep, Have cast their trembling shadow For ages on the deep: Mountain, and lake, and valley, A sacred legend know,

Of how the town was saved, one night,

Three hundred years ago.

Far from her home and kindred,
A Tyrol maid had fled,
To serve in the Swiss valleys,

And toil for daily bread;
And every year that fleeted

So silently and fast, Seemed to bear farther from her The memory of the Past.

Before ner stood fair Bregenz ;

Once more her towers arose; What were the friends beside her?

Only her country's foes! The faces of her kinsfolk,

The days of childhood flown, The echoes of her mountains,

Reclaimed her as their own!

Nothing she heard around her, (Though shouts rang forth again,)

Gone were the green Swiss valleys,

The pasture, and the plain; Before her eyes one vision,

And in her heart one cry, That said, "Go forth, save Bregenz,

And then, if need be, die!"

With trembling haste and breath

less,

With noiseless step, she sped; Horses and weary cattle

Were standing in the shed; She loosed the strong, white charger,

That fed from out her hand, She mounted, and she turned his head

Towards her native land.

Out-out into the darkness

Faster, and still more fast; The smooth grass flies behind her,

The chestnut wood is past; She looks up; clouds are heavy : Why is her steed so slow? Scarcely the wind beside them

Can pass them as they go.

"Faster!" she cries, "O faster!"

Eleven the church-bells chime: "O God," she cries, "help Bregenz,

And bring me there in time!" But louder than bells' ringing, Or lowing of the kine, Grows nearer in the midnight The rushing of the Rhine.

Shall not the roaring waters

Their headlong gallop check? The steed draws back in terror,

She leans upon his neck To watch the flowing darkness; The bank is high and steep; One pause he staggers forward,

And plunges in the deep.

She strives to pierce the blackness, And looser throws the rein; Her steed must breast the waters

That dash above his mane. How gallantly, how nobly,

He struggles through the foam, And see- - in the far distance

Shine out the lights of home!

Up the steep banks he bears her, And now, they rush again Towards the heights of Bregenz, That tower above the plain. They reach the gate of Bregenz,

Just as the midnight rings, And out come serf and soldier

To meet the news she brings.

Bregenz is saved! Ere daylight Her battlements are manned;