Thomas Wingfold, Curate, vol 2 | Page 2

are mine, Father of Jesus Christ.'"
He covered his eyes with his hands, and his lips grew white, and trembled. Thought had turned into prayer, and both were silent for a space. Rachel was the first to speak.
"I think I understand, uncle," she said. "I don't mind being God's dwarf. But I would rather be made after his own image; this can't be it. I should like to be made over again."
"And if the hope we are saved by be no mockery, if St. Paul was not the fool of his own radiant imaginings, you will be, my child.--But now let us forget our miserable bodies. Come up to my room, and I will read you a few lines that came to me this morning in the park."
"Won't you wait for Mr. Wingfold, uncle? He will be here yet, I think. It can't be ten o'clock. He always looks in on Saturdays as he goes home from his walk. I should like you to read them to him too. They will do him good, I know."
"I would, my dear, willingly, if I thought he would care for them. But I don't think he would. They are not good enough verses. He has been brought up on Horace, and, I fear, counts the best poetry the neatest."
"I think you must be mistaken there, uncle; I have heard him talk delightfully about poetry."
"You must excuse me if I am shy of reading my poor work to any but yourself, Rachel. My heart was wo much in it, and the subject is so sacred--"
"I am sorry you should think your pearls too good to cast before Mr. Wingfold, uncle," said Rachel, with a touch of disappointed temper.
"Nay, nay, child," returned Polwarth, "that was not a good thing to say. What gives me concern is, that there is so much of the rough dirty shell sticking about them, that to show them would be to wrong the truth in them."
Rachel seldom took long to repent. She came slowly to her uncle, where he stood with the lamp in his hand, looking in his face with a heavenly contrition, and saying nothing. When she reached him, she dropped on her knees, and kissed the hand that hung by his side. Her temper was poor Rachel's one sore-felt trouble.
Polwarth stooped and kissed her on the forehead, raised her, and leading her to the stair, stood aside to let her go first. But when she had been naughty Rachel would never go before her uncle, and she drew back. With a smile of intelligence he yielded and led the way. But ere they had climbed to the top, Rachel heard Mr. Wingfold's step, and went down again to receive him.

CHAPTER II
.
A DREAM.

Invited to ascend, Wingfold followed Rachel to her uncle's room, and there, whether guided by her or not, the conversation presently took such a turn that at length, of his own motion, Polwarth offered to read his verses. From the drawer of his table he took a scratched and scored halfsheet, and--not in the most melodious of voices, yet in one whose harshness and weakness could not cover a certain refinement of spiritual tenderness--read as follows:
Lord, hear my discontent: All blank I stand, A mirror polished by thy hand; Thy sun's beams flash and flame from me-- I cannot help it: here I stand, there he; To one of them I cannot say-- Go, and on yonder water play. Nor one poor ragged daisy can I fashion-- I do not make the words of this my limping passion. If I should say: Now I will think a thought, Lo! I must wait, unknowing, What thought in me is growing, Until the thing to birth is brought; Nor know I then what next will come From out the gulf of silence dumb. I am the door the thing did find To pass into the general mind; I cannot say I think-- I only stand upon the thought-well's brink; From darkness to the sun the water bubbles up-- I lift it in my cup. Thou only thinkest--I am thought; Me and my thought thou thinkest. Nought Am I but as a fountain spout From which thy water welleth out. Thou art the only One, the All in all. --Yet when my soul on thee doth call And thou dost answer out of everywhere, I in thy allness have my perfect share.
While he read Rachel crept to his knee, knelt down, and laid her head upon it.
If we are but the creatures of a day, yet surely were the shadow-joys of this miserable pair not merely nobler in their essence, but finer to the soul's palate than the shadow-joys of young Hercules Bascombe--Helen and horses and all! Poor Helen I cannot use for comparison, for she had no joy, save