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your gracious blooms arise
Mid soft and wooing
airs in gardens green,
Where venturesome brown bees and butterflies
Should hail you queen.
Here is no bee nor glancing butterfly;
They fled on rapid wings
before the snow:
Your sister lilies laid them down to die,
Long, long ago.
And here, amid the slowly dropping rain,
We keep our Easter feast,
with hearts whose care
Mars the high cadence of each lofty strain,
Each thankful prayer.
But not a shadow dims your joyance sweet,
No baffled hope or
memory darkly clad;
You lay your whiteness at the Lord's dear feet,
And are all glad.
O coward soul! arouse thee and draw near,
Led by these fragrant
acolytes to-day!
Let their sweet confidence rebuke thy fear,
Thy cold delay.
Come with thy darkness to the healing light,
Come with thy bitter,
which shall be made sweet,
And lay thy soil beside the lilies white,
At His dear feet!
EBB-TIDE.

Long reaches of wet grasses sway
Where ran the sea but yesterday,

And white-winged boats at sunset drew
To anchor in the crimsoning
blue.
The boats lie on the grassy plain,
Nor tug nor fret at anchor
chain;
Their errand done, their impulse spent,
Chained by an alien
element,
With sails unset they idly lie,
Though morning beckons
brave and nigh;
Like wounded birds, their flight denied,
They lie,
and long and wait the tide.
About their keels, within the net
Of tough grass fibres green and wet,

A myriad thirsty creatures, pent
In sorrowful imprisonment,

Await the beat, distinct and sweet,
Of the white waves' returning feet.

My soul their vigil joins, and shares
A nobler discontent than theirs;

Athirst like them, I patiently
Sit listening beside the sea,
And still
the waters outward glide:
When is the turning of the tide?
Come, pulse of God; come, heavenly thrill!
We wait thy
coming,--and we will.
The world is vast, and very far
Its utmost
verge and boundaries are;
But thou hast kept thy word to-day
In
India and in dim Cathay,
And the same mighty care shall reach

Each humblest rock-pool of this beach.
The gasping fish, the stranded
keel,
This dull dry soul of mine, shall feel
Thy freshening touch,
and, satisfied,
Shall drink the fulness of the tide.
FLOOD-TIDE.
All night the thirsty beach has listening lain,
With patience dumb,
Counting the slow, sad moments of her pain;
Now morn has come,
And with the morn the punctual tide again.
I hear the white battalions down the bay
Charge with a cheer;
The sun's gold lances prick them on their way,--

They plunge, they rear,--
Foam-plumed and snowy-pennoned, they
are here!
The roused shore, her bright hair backward blown,
Stands on the verge
And waves a smiling welcome, beckoning on
The flying surge,
While round her feet, like doves, the billows crowd
and urge.
Her glad lips quaff the salt, familiar wine;
Her spent urns fill;
All hungering creatures know the sound, the
sign,--
Quiver and thrill,
With glad expectance crowd and banquet at their
will.
I, too, the rapt contentment join and share;
My tide is full;
There is new happiness in earth, in air:
All beautiful
And fresh the world but now so bare and dull.
But while we raise the cup of bliss so high,
Thus satisfied,
Another shore beneath a sad, far sky
Waiteth her tide,
And thirsts with sad complainings still denied.
On earth's remotest bound she sits and waits
In doubt and pain;
Our joy is signal for her sad estates;
Like dull refrain
Marring our song, her sighings rise in vain.
To each his turn--the ebb-tide and the flood,

The less, the more--
God metes his portions justly out, I know;
But still before
My mind forever floats that pale and grieving shore.
A YEAR.
She has been just a year in Heaven.
Unmarked by white moon or gold
sun,
By stroke of clock or clang of bell,
Or shadow lengthening on
the way,
In the full noon and perfect day,
In Safety's very citadel,

The happy hours have sped, have run;
And, rapt in peace, all pain
forgot,
She whom we love, her white soul shriven,
Smiles at the
thought and wonders not.
We have been just a year alone,--
A year whose calendar is sighs,

And dull, perpetual wishfulness,
And smiles, each covert for a tear,

And wandering thoughts, half there, half here,
And weariful attempts
to guess
The secret of the hiding skies,
The soft, inexorable blue,

With gleaming hints of glory sown,
And Heaven behind, just shining
through.
So sweet, so sad, so swift, so slow,
So full of eager growth and light,

So full of pain which blindly grows,
So full of thoughts which
either way
Have passed and crossed and touched each day,
To us a
thorn, to her a rose;
The year so black, the year so white,
Like rivers
twain their course have run;
The earthly stream we trace and know,

But who shall paint the heavenly one?
A year! We gather up our powers,
Our lamps we consecrate and trim;

Open all windows to the day,
And welcome every heavenly air.

We will press forward and will bear,
Having this word to cheer the
way:
She, storm-tossed once, is safe with Him,
Healed, comforted,
content, forgiven;
And while we count these heavy hours
Has been
a year,--a year in Heaven.
TOKENS.

Each day upon the