WEARY IN WELL-DOING. WOULD have gone; God bade me stay: I would have worked; God bade me rest. Now I would stay; God bids me go: I go, Lord, where Thou sendest me; And rest with Thee? MISS ROSSETTI. TO MY OWN PORTRAIT. OW is it that before mine eyes, All my past years of life arise, What spell within thee hath been shrined, To image back my own deep mind? Even as a song of other times, Can trouble Memory's springs; Even as a sound of vesper-chimes, Can wake departed things; Even as a scent of vernal flowers Hath records fraught with vanished hours; Such power is thine!-they come, the dead, From the grave's bondage free, TO MY OWN PORTRAIT. And smiling back the changed are led, To look in love on thee; And voices that are music flown Speak to me in the heart's full tone, Till crowding thoughts my soul oppress, A passion which I may not stay, But thou, the while-oh, almost strange, Mine imaged self! it seems That on thy brow of peace no change Almost I marvel not to trace Those lights and shadows in thy face. To see thee calm, while powers thus deep, Pass o'er my soul as winds that sleep O'er a frail aspen-leaf! Oh! that the quiet of thine eye Might sink there when the storm goes by! 183 184 TO MY OWN PORTRAIT Yet look thou still serenely on; And if sweet friends there be, That when my song and soul are gone Tell them of One for whom 'twas best To "flee away and be at rest! MRS. HEMANS. HE number of Thine own complete, Sum up and make an end; Sift clean the chaff, and house the wheat, And then, O Lord, descend. Descend, and solve by that descent This mystery of life; Where good and ill together blent, Wage an undying strife. For rivers twain are gushing still Ill in the heart of good. |