“REJOICE EVERMORE.”

BUT how should, we be glad? We, that are journeying through a vale of tears, Encompast with a thousand woes and fears, How should we not be sad?

Angels that ever stand

Within the presence-chamber, and there raise
The never-interrupted hymn of praise,
May welcome this command.

Or they whose strife is o'er,

Who all their weary length of life have trod,
As pillars now within the temple of God,
That shall go out no more.

But we, who wander here,

We that are exiled in this gloomy place,
Still doomed to water earth's unthankful face

With many a bitter tear,

"Rejoice Evermore."

Bid us lament and mourn,

Bid us that we go mourning all the day,
And we will find it easy to obey,

Of our best things forlorn.

But not that we be glad;

If it be true the mourners are the blest,
O leave us, in a world of sin, unrest,
And trouble, to be sad.

I spake, and thought to weep;
For sin and sorrow, suffering and crime,
That fill the world, all mine appointed time
A settled grief to keep.

When lo! as day from night,

As day from out the womb of night forlorn,
So from that sorrow was that gladness born,
Even in mine own despite.

Yet was not that by this

Excluded; at the coming of that joy

Fled not that grief, nor did that grief destroy The newly-risen bliss:

But side by side they flow,

Two fountains flowing from one smitten heart,

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"Rejoice Evermore."

And ofttimes scarcely to be known apart,

That

That gladness and that woe.

Two fountains from one source,

Or which from two such neighboring sources run, for him who shall unseal the one, The other flows perforce.

aye

And both are sweet and calm;

Fair flowers upon the banks of either blow;
Both fertilize the soil, and where they flow
Shed round them holy balm.

TO SORROW.

SISTER Sorrow! sit beside me,
Or, if I must wander, guide me :
Let me take thy hand in mine;
Cold alike are mine and thine.

Think not, Sorrow, that I hate thee;
Think not I am frightened at thee;
Thou art come for some good end,
I will treat thee as a friend.

I will say that thou art bound
My unshielded soul to wound
By some force without thy will,
And art tender-minded still.

I will say thou givest scope
To the breath and light of hope;
That thy gentle tears have weight
Hardest hearts to penetrate;

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To Sorrow.

That thy shadow brings together
Friends long lost in sunny weather,
With an hundred offices

Beautiful and blest as these.

Softly takest thou the crown
From my haughty temples down:
Place it on thine own pale brow;
Pleasure wears one,—why not thou?

Let the blossoms glitter there
On thy long unbanded hair,
And, when I have borne my pain,

Thou wilt give me them again.