And day and night there should be one slow raining,

With mournful plash, upon the moor and moss, And on the hill one tree, its bare arms straining; Bare as my Saviour's cross.

Nay, if thy heart were sorrowful exceeding,
Its pulses big with that divinest woe,
These natural things would only set it bleeding
To think it should be so-

To think that guilty and degraded Nature
Could look as joyful as she looketh now,

When the warm blood has dropp'd from her Creator
Upon her branded brow.

A FINE DAY ON LOUGH SWILLY.

SOFT slept the beautiful autumn

In the heart, on the face of the Lough

Its heart, whose pulses were hush'd,

Calm lay the woodlands of Fahan :
The summer was gone, yet it lay
On the gently yellowing leaves

Like a beautiful poem, whose tones
Are mute, whose words are forgot,
But its music sleepeth for ever
Within the music of thought.
The robin sang from the ash,
The sunset's pencils of gold

No longer wrote their great lines
On the boles of the odorous limes,
Or bathed the tree-tops in glory,
But a soft strange radiance there hung
In splinters of tenderest light.
And those who look'd from Glengollen
Saw the purple wall of the Scalp,
As if through an old church window
Stain'd with a marvellous blue.

From the snow-white shell strand of Inch
You could not behold the white horses
Lifting their glittering backs,

Tossing their manes on Dunree,
And the battle boom of Macammish
Was lull'd in the delicate air.
As in old pictures the smoke
Goes up from Abraham's pyre,

So the smoke went up from Rathmullen;
And beyond the trail of the smoke
Was a great deep fiery abyss

Of molten gold in the sky,

And it set a far track up the waters
Ablaze with gold like its own.

Over the fire of the sea,

Over the chasm in the sky,
My spirit as by a bridge
Of wonder went wandering on,
And lost its way in the heaven.

The ship is out on the lake,
The fisherman stands on the deck.

Rosy and violet sea;

Delicate haze in the distance;

Woodlands softer than summers;
Great golden eye of intense,
Concentrated marvellous light;
Mysterious suggestions of thought;
Beautiful yearnings of fancy;
Wonderful imaginations;

Throbs of the being immortal

Who, prison'd deep in the heart, Looks through the bars of the flesh :— What recketh he of them all?

So to the reasonless eye

The Master's picture is only

A heap of colouring flat,

A strange confusion of strokes,

And thought, and study, and books,

And fine traditions of taste,

Are the glasses through which we survey

The beauty of natural things,

Till stars come splendidly out

That our eyes would have never beheld;
And cultured association

Hangeth to things that we see,

Hints and prophetical types,

Shadows grand and immortal,

Sacraments dim and delightful,

Of the things that the eye hath not seen.

O this ship and ocean of life !—

I, like the fisherman's boy,

On this awful beautiful sea

Gaze on a glory for ever

That I love not, nor know as I ought

Sail on a beautiful deep,

Hear the soft washing of waves

That set to the shore of our God-
Look on purpureal hills,

Look on exquisite woods,

Soft, and most solemn and stately— Sail toward the gate of Heaven,

Yet know it not, nor consider!

Hues more radiant by far

Than the Autumn ever could give
Move round my wondrous existence,
The daily deep of my life;

Prospects of things that shall be
In the country over the waves—
Memories, sorrows, and thoughts—
Noble and beautiful words,
Deeds that darkly reveal

The transparent measureless depth
Of the soul of our nature's Redeemer.
Oh for the day that shall teach me
To know their meaning at last,
Beyond the lake of this life,

Beyond the gate of the sunset

Upon the hyaline sea!