Still, in that thirsty land where it befell

That one for mortal streams who thirsted sore, But needing the immortal waters more, Found, Hagar-like, her Lord beside the well;

Oh, still by Sion, and where Jordan runs,
Over against his waterfalls dark grey
The Arabs pitch their nomad tents to-day
Upon the land that knoweth not her sons.

But not for ever-i
—it shall yet be well;
And when this tyranny is overpast,
Deep respite from unquiet find at last
Alike God's Isaac and His Ishmael.

Enough of fret and fever-he is gone;
Long ages since he yielded up his breath;
Why should he live so sadly after death?
Leave him to sleep, and let the world pass on.

Seek not to raise again the broken psalm,
So strangely utter'd to the desert sky;
After quick throbbing, it is sweet to die,
And take a deep exchange of awful calm.

Freely, as one not having aught to hide,
Before his brethren's faces to the last,
Softly and gallantly the wild soul pass'd;
Homelike and hero-like the death he died.*

So rest in death's dark tent beyond thy wars,
Where noise of battle doth for ever cease,
Nor earthly weeping break upon thy peace,
Under the brimm'd eyes of the Eastern stars.

*Gen. xxv. 18.

Q

Dear is the boon that much oblivion gave;
Not monumental marble for the head,

But kindly gloom around the quiet dead,-
The requiescat of an unknown grave.

And I, upon the wings of thought would bear
Thy body from the noise of busy men,
Into the heart of some untrodden glen,

Far off amid the lustrous mountain air;

There to be buried when the night shall fall,
In Sinai, a bowshot from the crest,

Caught like a child, into its mother's breast-
The bosom of the Hagar of St. Paul.*

Robert Jocelyn Alexander.

* "For this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia." Reiche seems to prove that St. Paul here states (Gal. iv. 24) that locally, in Arabia, Mount Sinai was known by a name equivalent in meaning to Hagar. ("Comment. Crit." in locum.)

IV.

SONNETS.

THREE SONNETS SUGGESTED BY SAMUEL RUTHERFORD'S "TRIAL AND TRIUMPH OF FAITH."

I.

Look, if eternally a fair rose grew,

And if therefrom suns near yet not intense
Won out a purple-flamèd opulence,

Impassioning the paleness through and through
Eternally beneath the unchanging blue;

Then should that rose eternally from thence

Offer its beauty to the eyes and sense.
And if eternally some mother knew
Her gentle babe in malediction born
Eternal-but eternally most weak,
Eternal-but eternally forlorn,

Then should she aye have words of ruth to speak,

And from the mother to her child of woe

For ever should the sweet compassion flow.

II.

The roses and the mothers cannot choose

But give forth what of beautiful they have,
But give forth what fair love and sunshine gave
In tender sympathy, or in delicate hues,