FROM "ISOBEL'S CHILD." 287 And keep his own wild soul within Let me to my Heaven go! A harp whose strings are golden all, We shall all be poets there, Gazing on the chiefest Fair! "And love! earth's love! and can we love Fixedly where all things move? Can the sinning love each other? Mother, mother! I tremble in thy close embrace,- Loose thy prayer, and let me go Escape to thee from this below, The nurse awakes in the morning sun, The babe upon her arm was dead! She was awed by the calm in the mother's eye. "Wake, nurse!" the lady said; And thou must help me to o'erlay "I changed the cruel prayer I made, The dead, calm face; and I am calm: And Heaven is hearkening a new psalm. FROM "ISOBEL'S CHILD." 289 This earthly noise is too anear, Too loud, and will not let me hear The little harp. Make silence." My death will soon And a sense of tune, A satisfied love, meanwhile, Which nothing earthly could despoil, O you, Earth's tender and impassioned few, Breaking the narrow prayers that may In His broad, loving will. 25 THE INFANT SPIRIT'S PRAYER. LINES ADDRESSED TO A LADY WHO HAD LOST HER HUSBAND AND CHILD. ANONYMOUS. "In heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father." SILENCE filled the courts of heaven, hushed were angel harp and tone, While a little new-born spirit knelt before the Eternal throne. As his small white hands were lifted, clasped as if in earnest prayer, And his voice in low, sweet murmurs rose like music on the air, Light from the full fount of glory on his robes of whiteness glistened, And the bright-winged seraphs round him bowed their radiant heads and listened. "Lord, from thy world of glory here, Meekly hath she drained the cup, Comfort, comfort my sweet mother! THE INFANT SPIRIT'S PRAYER. "Earth is growing lonely round her, Let her think, while faint and weary, 291 Let each thought that makes earth dreary Make the thought of heaven more dear. "Saviour, thou, in nature human, Thou, who from thy cross of suffering "Thou, who, from the heavens descending, Tears and woes and suffering won; Thou, who, nature's laws suspending, Thou, who at the grave of Lazarus Wept with those who wept their dead; Thou, who once in mortal anguish Bowed thine own anointed head, Comfort, comfort my sweet mother!" |