For rest enfolded in that happy haunt,

For time to meditate the Church's creed;
For prayer, that when from the baptismal font
He rises by regeneration freed,

The white life issuing thence his soul may win
To wear immaculate in a world of sin.

It was a little company of ten.

Over them all was Monica gently set,
A flower of womanhood for those loving men.
O winter flower, O faded violet,

By what rude fortune from thy garden toss'd,
Paled by what sun, discoloured by what frost?

With her a boy of fifteen summers came.
Into the presence of the lad did pass
An influence from a climate as of flame;
And in those lustrous eyes of his there was

A tint of flowers and oceans far away
Amid the woods and waves of Africa.

Him evermore a shadow overhung,

Not of the great Numidian forests born— The prophecy of genius that dies young,

The far cloud-film of a too radiant morn. Ah! they who early pass through one dark gate Have looks like thine, thou young Adeodate!

Thou art of those who breathe with a strange smile The delicate words that only genius saith; Guests whom God spares us but a little while, For they are wanted in the land of death, And leave but tracks of light that was not seen, Hints of a golden land that might have been.

Hast thou no mother with a name to note?

It is not written in the tenderest scroll That love and recollection ever wrote, The perfected confession of a soul. Into the dark she glides, a silent shame, And a veil'd memory without a name.

And the world knoweth not what words she pray'd,
With what long wail before the altar wept,
What tale she told, what penitence she made,

What measure by her beating heart was kept,
Nor in what vale or mountain the earth lies
Upon the passionate Carthaginian's eyes.

Well that one penitent hath found such grace
As to be silent in the silent years,

That no light hand hath lifted from her face
The silver veil enwoven of her tears.

Well that one book at least, at least one sod,
Keeps close one tender secret of our God.

Well that the virgin saints of her may cry,
"Our sister comes, mute after many tears-
Some anguish rounded by a victory

Is hers, some calm after a storm of years.
O noble pity, that consoles her quite!
O large forgiveness, touching all to white!"

Next comes the laureate of the little throng,
The young Licentius, whose deft art confers
Some grace upon the later Latin song—

Waxwork, not marble, in hexameters--
Drawing in colours soft, but soon to cease,
A pastel for a proud old masterpiece.

But one moves aye among them as the chief—

A thoughtful brow with saint engrav'd thereon. And there was something of the Psalmist's grief, And of the inspiration of St. John,

And of the gravity that might beseem
The Plato of that little Academe.

Roman his speech, not as men talk'd at Rome. Here an apostle spake, and there a psalm, And here philosophy had made its home.

Passion and thought he pack'd in epigram, Marring the stone of speech wherewith he wrought, But perfecting the likeness of his thought.

O'er all he said there hung a subtle spell.
For with him over sea a native art
He brought, an accent's glamour suiting well
Magnificent barbarisms of the heart,
Learn'd by inhaling 'neath Numidian trees
Sunny solecisms of the provinces.

Four lakes, that made a fourfold heav'n below, Slept in that pleasant place, where Apennine Grey-fissured meets the Alpine lines of snow;

Round it a symphony of light divine,

Red on the hill-side, gold along the plain,
The purpling cluster, and the yellowing grain.

One of those spots where busy hearts are still
And world-worn natures quietly renew'd.
I see it now, hill rising over hill,

The near ones crested with the olive wood,
And in the bluish distance, where morn breaks,
White behind all a line of snowy peaks.

Fair sped the days. At noon, not overproud,
They help'd the rustics with the vines or herd,
Which done, full oft the autumn-tide allow'd

Sweet liberty for prayer or for the word,
Or for discourses grave, or readings made
From a page chequer'd by the chestnut shade.

Well for the men whose spirits try to scale
The mountain peaks that overtop our lives.
There is a victory for them that fail,

Defeat alone for him who never strives.

High themes wherewith to cope makes weak men strong:Well for the men who lived when thought was young.

Well for the men who lived in the long ago,
They breath'd an ampler quietude than we;
A few great books which they had time to know,
Fresh as the untiring voices of the sea,

Made the old music that is ever new :

Well for the men who lived when books were few.

Few books were with them; but they were the best— The Epistles, Gospels, and prophetic scroll;

The Psalter, too, wherein the ruggedest

Of Latin takes to it a Hebrew soul,

And seems to yearn for music that may reach
The mysteries that lie beyond all speech.

Others, moreover, which no sage contemns,
Nearest immortal mortals ever wrought,
Whose perfect words are the all-opulent gems

That star the broad brows of the kings of thought,
Whose lines shall live as long as numbers flow-
Plato was there, Plotin, and Cicero.

They show in distance-chief the glorious Greek-
The needle-point of truth enwrapt in mist,
Not the way leading to that difficult peak—

Yet Plato preach'd magnificently Christ.

Yea, in each volume, and on every sod,
Whatever truth man troweth is of God.

Now, as I write, I seem to hear the kine,
The rippling murmur of the little stream

That runs toward the bath through banks of vine,
I see the moonlit hills rise like a dream-
very leaf which autumn-tide brought low
In Lombardy a thousand years ago;

The

And as it dropped insubstantive on the rill,
And sinking help'd to break the brimming flow,
Set moving high discourse of fate and will,

Proving that chance is God's incognito—

That chance, in Heaven's tongue order, interweaves Vaster variety than waves and leaves.

And oft I meditate what round they made
Of solemn usage and of stately form,
On what fair frame of visible things they stay'd;
What music fell in tears or rose in storm,

What soft imaginative rites they had,

With what investiture their faith they clad.

Not then the church rose visibly encrown'd.
No mighty minster tower'd majestic yet.
No organ gave its plenitude of sound,

And on the Alpine pinnacle was set
No carven King, whose crown is of the thorn,
No Calvary crimson in the southern morn.