THE ISLAND CHURCH.*

POOR was the peasant, poor and heavy-hearted,
Gone were his fields, his children, and his wife,
The kindly friends of other days departed,

The fine lights faded from the hills of life.

Glad threads of speech, if rough, the labourers mingle
By their own fires, where their own smoke-wreaths curl,
But Onni sat beside the stranger's ingle,

And steeped in tears the scant bread of a churl.

The young have hope; but on his head was shaken
The snow that summer sun shall never thaw,

Yet bless'd are they whom Heaven has undertaken
To chasten and to teach from God's own law.

O bread of God! O fields for ever sunny!

O fadeless flowers upon life's craggiest shelves! O better substance, more enduring money,

By grace laid up within our hearts themselves!

Midsummer Day! All night the child has folden
Himself in expectation, heart and head,
Like bee in some rich flow'r-bell dusty golden,
With long sleep pleasantly disquieted.

* The idea of this poem is taken from one by Runeberg, of which I have only seen a literal French translation.

Midsummer Day! All night the rivers going
By heath and holm triumphantly have slid;
All night a soft and silver overflowing

From joy expected bathed the sleeper's lid.

Midsummer Day! At morn the maiden merry
Dons her green kirtle; in the hawthorn lane
The farmer's boy beneath the rows of cherry
Brings hampers full of flow'rs in the wane.

Midsummer Day! The sad and wrinkled peasant
Smiles as he stands erect upon the sod:
"In holy church to-day it will be pleasant
To taste the liberty of the sons of God.'

Midsummer Day! They smother up the altar
With coronals, the brightest of the year;
The village choir have practised well the Psalter,
The grand old hymns to Finland ever dear.

The feast of flowers! The old priest has conn'd over
A brand-new homily-joyful yet perplexed-
Redolent of garden bloom and meadow-clover;
"Behold the lilies," is the good man's text.

The feast of flowers! Sky, ocean, earth, seem turning
All things to flowers. Midsummer winds expire
In perfumed music through the roses, burning
Like wreaths of red flame on the gilded wire.

Flowers in the churches! Every birchen column
Blushes like dawn, or gleams as when it snows;
Their sweet breath in the holy air is solemn,

Like warbled music when it comes and goes.

Flowers on the window-sill, and in the chamber,
Flowers round the great stem of the village tree,
And far away of infinite blue and amber

The rose of heaven, the violet of the sea.

Speaks out the peasant Onni: “O my master!
But for a little while let me away.

Hark, through the woodland walks is rising faster
The voice of them that keep their holiday.

“All winter long, when the wild wind was grieving, Thou know'st I drudged for thee in wet and cold ; All spring, when God's great sunshine was inweaving Through forest-leaves his thousand nets of gold,

"I work'd thy flax; and still the bounding river
Swept with his sound of trumpets through the glade,
But my poor ear was sicken'd with the shiver
That the monotonous shuttle always made.

"Worse, worse than that; for we our gathering festal Once in the twelvemonth only have down here, But saints and angels, on the sea of crystal,

Their feast of flowers keep round th' eternal year.

"And much I dread, lest, when my dear Lord call me,
The chants of Heaven sound strange within my heart,
The low base influence of the earth enthral me,
Till I forget how I may bear my part.

'Yea, worse than all, six months how long and dreary, This starving soul of mine is unsufficed

With that sweet invitation to the weary,

The music of the promises of Christ.

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O master !-let me call thee, O, my brother!— I pray thee by all prayers thy heart may search, I pray thee by the days when with thy mother

Thou kept'st the feast, O let me go to church!'

But the churl pointed to the stream, where sombre
A great white mist was creeping from the hill,
Dulling the splendid laughters without number
That twinkled on the water by the mill,

And said with thick voice, eloquent of the flagon, "There lies thy way to church, thou preaching loon ! Go in that boat alone, I have no waggon

Perhaps thy prayers to church will bring thee soon."

And Onni heard speechless, and taking only
The oar, full heavy for that wrinkled hand,
A weak adventurer in his vessel lonely,

Pray'd inly, "God of ocean and of land!

"Sweetly and strongly at Thy will far-bringing

All fins in waves, all plumes upon the breeze, Beautiful birds to western forest winging,

And whatso passeth through the paths of seas,

"Me, of more value, with my soul immortal, Mine infinite futurity, than they,

Me, a wing'd voyager to Thy starry portal,

Lead, loving Father! to Thy church to-day."

Wearily, wearily, drags the oar, and slowly,
Like a man blinded by the snow athwart
His smarting eyelids, trails the boat, and wholly
Lost in the fog, the rower loses heart.

And ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, in the distance,

The church bells sounded over holt and hill.

He dropp'd his oars, and, weary of resistance,
Let the strong river bear him at its will,

Until at last the bark's keel sharply grated
Upon the white sand of a little isle ;

Then ding dong, ding dong, to the man belated.
The bells first clash'd, then ceased a little while.

White clung the colourless mist on the island forest,
Unbeautifying its green depths and fells;
Sad were his thoughts, but just when grief was sorest,
A silver music changed upon the bells.

Then the mist thinn'd; the lustrous sky, from off it
Sweeping one cloud, left interspace of blue,
One isle of summer-light, one voiceless prophet
Of sunny touches that make all things new;

And kenn'd beyond the furthest intervening

Of dark green hall, and sombre colonnade, The northern river far away was sheening

Like the dark blue of some Damascan blade.

"Ah, in the church are psalms divinely tender
Yet here is music too, not earthly born,
Dropp'd downward by the skylarks as they render
Some air heard up beside the gates of morn.

And in the woodland depths, with restless shiver,
From branch to branch the countless wild birds sing;
So the swift bow of a musician ever

Flits with the melody from string to string.