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THE DEAD PAN.

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To us, us also open straight!
The outer life is chilly-
Are we too, like the earth, to wait
Till next year for our Lily?

-Oh, my own baby on my knees,
My leaping, dimpled treasure,
At every word I write like these,
Clasped close, with stronger pressure!

Too well my own heart understands-
At every word beats fuller-
-My little feet, my little hands,
And hair of Lily's color!

-But God gives patience, Love learns strength,
And Faith remembers promise,
And Hope itself can smile at length
On other hopes gone from us.

Love, strong as Death, shall conquer Death,
Through struggle, made more glorious.
This mother stills her sobbing breath,
Renouncing, yet victorious.

Arms empty of her child, she lifts,
With spirit unbereaven-
"God will not take back all his gifts;
My Lily's mine in heaven!

"Still mine! maternal rights serene
Not given to another!

The crystal bars shine faint between
The souls of child and mother.

"Meanwhile," the mother cries, "content! Our love was well divided.

Its sweetness following where she went,
Its anguish stayed where I did.

"Well done of God, to halve the lot,
And give her all the sweetness;
To us, the empty room and cot-

To her, the heaven's completeness.

"To us, this grave-to her, the rows
The mystic palm-trees spring in.
To us, the silence in the house-
To her, the choral singing.

"For her, to gladden in God's viewFor us, to hope and bear on !Grow, Lily, in thy garden new, Beside the rose of Sharon.

"Grow fast in heaven, sweet Lily clipped,
In love more calm than this is-
And may the angels dewy-lipped
Remind thee of our kisses!

"While none shall tell thee of our tears,

These human tears now falling, Till, after a few patient years,

One home shall take us all in.

"Child, father, mother-who left out?
Not mother, and not father!-
And when, our dying couch about,
The natural mists shall gather,

"Some smiling angel close shall stand
In old Correggio's fashion,
And bear a LILY in his hand,
For death's ANNUNCIATION."

THE DEAD PAN.

Excited by Schiller's "Götter Griechenlands," and partly founded on a well-known tradition mentioned in a treatise of Plutarch (" De Oraculorum Defectu "), according to which at the hour of the Saviour's agony a cry of "Great Pan is dead!" swept across the waves in the hearing of certain mariners-and the oracles ceased.

GODS of Hellas, gods of Hellas,
Can ye listen in your silence?
Can your mystic voices tell us
Where ye hide? In floating islands,
With a wind that evermore
Keeps you out of sight of shore?

Pan, Pan is dead.

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Christ hath sent us down the angels; And the whole earth and the skies Are illumed by altar-candles

Lit for blessed mysteries;

And a Priest's hand, through creation, Waveth calm and consecration

And Pan is dead.

Truth is fair: should we forego it?
Can we sigh right for a wrong?
God himself is the best Poet,
And the Real is his song.
Sing his truth out fair and full,
And secure his beautiful.

Let Pan be dead.

Truth is large. Our aspiration
Scarce embraces half we be.
Shame, to stand in His creation,
And doubt truth's sufficiency !—
To think God's song unexcelling
The poor tales of our own telling-

When Pan is dead.

What is true and just and honest,
What is lovely, what is pure-
All of praise that hath admonished,
All of virtue, shall endure-
These are themes for poets' uses,
Stirring nobler than the Muses,

Ere Pan was dead.

O brave poets, keep back nothing,
Nor mix falsehood with the whole.
Look up Godward; speak the truth in
Worthy song from earnest soul!
Hold, in high poetic duty,
Truest Truth the fairest Beauty.
Pan, Pan is dead.

COWPER'S GRAVE.

Ir is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying.

It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying.

Yet let the grief and humbleness, as low as silence, languish.

Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish.

O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing!

O Christians, at your cross of hope, a hopeless hand was clinging!

O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,

Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling!

And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story,

How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory,

And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed,

He wore no less a loving face because so brokenhearted,

He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high | Deserted! Who hath dreamt that when the cross in darkness rested,

vocation,

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THOU bay-crowned living One that o'er the baycrowned Dead art bowing,

And o'er the shadeless moveless brow the vital shadow throwing,

And o'er the sighless songless lips the wail and music wedding,

And dropping o'er the tranquil eyes, the tears not of their shedding!—

Take music from the silent Dead, whose meaning is completer,

Reserve thy tears for living brows, where all such tears are meeter,

And leave the violets in the grass to brighten where thou treadest!

No flowers for her! no need of flowers-albeit bring flowers," thou saidest.

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The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her Yes, flowers, to crown the " cup and lute!"

bending o'er him,

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since both may come to breaking. Or flowers, to greet the "bride!" the heart's own beating works its aching. Or flowers, to soothe the "captive's" sight, from earth's free bosom gathered, Reminding of his earthly hope, then withering as it withered.

But bring not near the solemn corse, a type of human seeming.

Lay only dust's stern verity upon the dust undreaming.

And while the calm perpetual stars shall look upon it solely,

Her sphered soul shall look on them, with eyes more bright and holy.

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