But when begins
The array for battle, and the trumpet blows,
A King must leave the feast, and lead the fight.
        And with its mortal foes,—
Grim gathering hosts of sorrows and of sins,—
        Each human soul must close.
        And Fame her trumpet blow
Before him; wrapped him in her purple state;
And made him mark for all the shafts of Fate,
        That henceforth round him flew.

NEVER TO KNOW.

One within in a crimson glow,
        Silently sitting;
One without on the fallen snow,
        Wearily flitting;
        Never to know
That one looked out with yearning sighs,
While one looked in with wistful eyes,
        And went unwitting.

What came of the one without, that so
        Wearily wended?
Under the stars and under the snow
        His journey ended!
        Never to know
That the answer came to those wistful eyes,
But passed away in those yearning sighs,
        With night winds blended.

What came of the one within, that so
        Yearned forth with sighing?
More sad, to my thinking, her fate, the glow
        Drearily dying;
        Never to know
That for a moment her life was nigh,
And she knew it not and it passed her by,
        Recall denying.

These were two hearts that long ago—
        Dreaming and waking—
Each to a poet revealed its woe,
        Wasting and breaking;
        Never to know
That if each to other had done but so!
Both had rejoiced in the crimson glow,

And one had not lain 'neath the stars and snow

          Forsaken—forsaking!

"THESE THREE."

No viewless angels by our side,
    With wings, but women sweet and good;
"These Three," indeed, with us abide,
    True types of womanhood.
Yea, I, in turn, have reached a hand
    To each one of the blessed three,
In one fair group, I've seen them stand—
    Faith, Hope, and Charity.

My Faith hath misty hair,—and eyes,
    You cannot fix their changing hue,
But all the world within them lies,
    And all the soul looks through.
Her voice doth make divinely sweet
    Each song of sorrow which she sings,
And saddest wisdom fills replete
    With heavenly comfortings.

My Hope is ruddy with the flush
    Of morning joy, that keeps its place,
Though day has darkened, and the rush
    Of rain is on her face.
Her clear eyes look afar, as bent
    On shining futures gathering in;
Nought seems too high for her intent,
    Too hard for her to win.

My Love hath eyes as blue and clear
    As clefts between the clouds of June,
A tender mouth whose smiles are near
    To tears that gather soon.
Her best and loveliest she takes,
    To light dark places;—wastes of life
She sows with precious seed that makes
    All richest blessings rife.

Faith, when my soul in darkness dwells,
    Shall sing her song throughout the night,
For each new effort life compels
    Hope's clasp shall nerve with might;
Love shall divide each grief of mine,
    Share every joy thus doubly given,
With each in turn life grows divine,
    With all it tastes of heaven.

MARTIN AND KATE.

O Kate, my Kate, these crooked Hebrew letters
        Are wriggling through my brain!
Cramps hold my fingers in their devil's fetters
        With crushing grip of pain.

Give me your hand, Kate!   Come into the garden,
        And sit beneath our vine;
Smoothing the cramp-knots as they twist and harden
        With those soft palms of thine.

A flask of wine and my old lute bring hither;
        And in the evening calm,
Tasting God's goodness, we will sing together
        My own triumphal psalm.

Good is our God! good all his gifts transcending,
        And yet this ghastly doubt—
As with the smoke of torment never ending
        The stars are blotted out.

O Kate! my Kate! again my soul is sinking
        Into the pit of pain;
'Tis writ in mockery—see those star eyes winking—
        "God's kingdom doth remain."

Yes, it may be, because our convents quitting,
        We vowed, and did not pay,
That in the outer darkness we are sitting,
        The heaven-gates closed for aye.

Shall we return? shall they from prison driven
        Out into God's free air,
Back, because blinded by the light of Heaven,
        Return for refuge there?

God is our trust; His word of truth we cherish
        Through doubt and fear and pain;
Down, Satan, down, even though His Word should perish,
        "His kingdom doth remain."

                                             The Sunday Herbert came
And stood among them, in his father's stead,
With a new heavenly message, his mere voice
Went nearer to their souls than any words
With meaning new and strange.   But when at length
He named his father, all the people looked
In trouble to Squire Aubrey, where he sat,
And down the squire's red checks the round tears rolled,
And all the congregation wept at this.
The six old women from the almshouse wept,
And then the village mothers, and the girls,
And something—what, they did not seek to know—
Made John and Giles soft-hearted, that they stept
Through the old churchyard, with their thick-nailed shoes,
Lightlier and gentlier at their hearths that night
Stroked down the little heads.
                                                                 The advent this,
Of one who followed in his Master's steps,
Christ's faithful soldier.   But not thus are won
His daily victories; the spirit sword
The breath of some heroic soul may sweep
A space of heaven clear at a single stroke,
And set souls free to conquer; yet again
The powers of darkness rally; and the light
Pours upon eyes that see not, and the voice
Enters the ears that will not understand.
And so they murmured: "In his father's days
We never heard such things.   It we were sick
He gave us physic, or mayhap good wine;
Now we are told that if we ache or ail
Tis mostly our own fault.   'Tis blasphemy,
'Tis flying in the face of providence,
To say God sends no sickness save we sin;
And that all illness is a sign of ill,
Of something done against the will of God,
Or left undone that He would have us do.
He tells us too we may escape the sin,
But never can escape the punishment;
His rather preached another God, who said
' Repent and be forgiven.' "
                                                        Thus they warped
The message from its meaning, straight and true;
For as the father, so the children lived
In the old forest hamlets, underneath
The cliff that walled the river, underneath
The long dank dripping of the rainy woods.
The houses looked like clusters of white nests,
Hanging mid foliage; but these human nests,
Damp and unwholesome, nursed the serpent pain
To gnaw the bones of age; and poison heaps
Festered without, and when the sun was hot
There you might see, like evil genii rise,
In smoke, fierce fevers, drinking up the blood
Of fathers and of children.
                                                         "Take away
Our plague, " was still their cry, not take away
Our sloth, our ignorance, our unbelief—
Yet Herbert never falters in his work,
Nor ever slackens; grudges no high thought,
Brought down and meanly clad for common use;
Thinks the thought highest which can lowest reach,
To raise the lowest, holds the highest task.

                                               The boy awoke
And saw him sit there; slept, and woke again;
And there he sat and loomed out of the dark
Until he seemed a giant to the child.
The chequered moonlight fell across the floor,
Leaving the death-bed curtained by the dark
And awful mysteries of life and death,
Confused, impenetrable, undefined,
Hovered about the boy, and he would fain
Have called upon his father in the night,
But that he seemed a portion of the dread,
The unappeasable, appealless fate
That held him, and should hold him ever more.
Then he bethought him of his prayer, and said
"Our Father," and so slept until the dawn.
And in the faint dawn he was sitting there,
Who never once had drowsed nor drooped his head
Nor groaned for any anguish of his soul—
But when the morning sun looked in, he rose
With sweat-drops on his forehead.

—songs have power to quiet
    The restless pulse of care,
And come like the Benediction
    That follows after prayer.