ADRIFT ON THE ARCTIC SEA.

I SEE a ship adrift upon the tide,

Methinks she maketh past King William's Land; The stars are glimmering through her rifted side, Her mast is like a giant's broken wand.

What, is there no one standing at the wheel?
An awful ship indeed without a stir;

Yet through the icebergs steers the rolling keel,
Like death's pale horses panting after her.

Well done, O silent ship! the bar is past,
The icy battlement left upon the lee;
Why doth no gallant sailor climb the mast
To view the glory of that iceless sea ?

O silent ship and crew! the starriest crown

Of all earth's mariners your deed hath won; But lo! the ship first reels, and then goes down, And with her all her crew—a skeleton.

So when some thinker wins the prize of thought,
And his keel cuts the just-discover'd wave,
Down with him goes the work that he has wrought—
He finds at once a passage and a grave.

L

PAINTING FOR TIME.

ONE sunny eventide,
At a great painter's side,
A maiden paced glad eyed.
Enchanted did she see

That glorious gallery.

Beauty and strength were there,
The heroic and the fair,
Faces superbly wrought

By the creative thought.
Happy she walk'd, and proud,
Yet something like a cloud
Just touch'd the maiden's brow.
Quoth he, "What thinkest thou?”
"Master," she said, "this place
Is haunted with all grace.

There, where shafts falling late
Those forms irradiate,

Lo! as I gaze, they seem
To pass into a dream.

A dream-but, as men say,
Ere sea-frets gather grey,
While still is light to scan,

That stream Northumbrian,*

* The Coquet at Warkworth, famous for the peculiar definiteness of

the shadows which it reflects.

The shadow of the spire,

And the autumn trees on fire
Look as real as the things

To our imaginings.

So gazing here I think,

As by that river's brink
Shadow and substance stand
Inverted by thy hand-
The shadows I and you,
They only fix'd and true,
They those alone who live,
And we insubstantive,

Yet on their features all

Whose semblance fills the hall

Why hath thy hand let fall

That wanness as of snow?

Master, I long to know."

"Heed not what now appears.

In the abyss of years;

In the unapparent morn
Of centuries unborn,

Something more fair and fine
Than thou canst now divine;
Some magic colour thrown
On the white monotone,
Some unimagined dye

Under the distant sky
Of the futurity,

Shall yet unlighted eyes
Transcendently surprise.
Say not this colouring pale
Is but of small avail.
The hues thou dost create
Are too immaculate.

Flood them with warmer flood,
Paint with more passionate blood,
As with red grape's rich juice
The whiteness interfuse.
Men generations hence
Shall thank my abstinence
Prophetic and sublime."
He cried, "I paint for time,
And these shall live in light,
Ideal and infinite

Of dawns when I lie dead.
I paint for time,” he said.

Laughter, or love, or tears,
Who would bequeath his peers,
Far through the distant years;
Who would a work descry
Man's heart will not let die,
While lives mortality;

He with an aim sublime
Must also paint for time,
And proudly wise let fall
Applauses temporal.

NARROW GOODNESS.

LINES WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF POSTHUMOUS SERMONS.

As a child, in a quiet place

Which earth's wild whirl hath hardly stirr'd,

Grows shy as some fair forest bird,

And feareth every stranger's face,

And wots not what a world there is
Of love beyond his little isle,
Half jealous of his father's smile,
Half jealous of his mother's kiss;

But when he leaves that strip of strand,
Life's larger continent to explore,
He findeth friends on the far shore,
And graspeth many a brother's hand:

So may I deem it fares with thee—

So
may I think that thou hast found,
O man of God! who standest crown'd
With glory on the crystal sea!

Where all the harps are heavenly sweet,
Where all the palms are passing green;
Where on all faces falls the sheen
Of the temple in the golden street;