And as on the sacred missal
He recorded their dismissal,
Death relaxed his iron features,

And the monk replied, "Amen!"

Many centuries have been numbered
Since in death the baron slumbered
By the convent's sculptured portal,

Mingling with the common dust :

But the good deed, through the ages
Living in historic pages,
Brighter grows and gleams immortal,
Unconsumed by moth or rust.

RAIN IN SUMMER.

How beautiful is the rain!

After the dust and heat,

In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,

How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,

Like the tramp of hoofs !

How it gushes and struggles out

From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window pane

It pours and pours;

And swift and wide,

With a muddy tide,

Like a river down the gutter roars

The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber looks

At the twisted brooks;

He can feel the cool

Breath of each little pool;

His fevered brain

Grows calm again,

And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

From the neighbouring school

Come the boys,

With more than their wonted noise

And commotion;

And down the wet streets

Sail their mimic fleets,

Till the treacherous pool

Engulphs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.

In the country, on every side,

Where far and wide

Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,

Stretches the plain,

To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!

In the furrowed land

The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,

They silently inhale

The clover-scented gale,

And the vapours that arise

From the well-watered and smoking soil.

For this rest in the furrow after toil

Their large and lustrous eyes

Seem to thank the Lord,

More than man's spoken word.

A A

His pastures and his fields of grain,

As they bend their tops

To the numberless beating drops

Of the incessant rain.

He counts it as no sin
That he sees therein

Only his own thrift and gain.

These, and far more than these,

The poet sees !
He can behold

Aquarius old

Walking the fenceless fields of air;
And from each ample fold

Of the clouds about him rolled
Scattering everywhere

The showery rain,

As the farmer scatters his grain.

He can behold

Things manifold

That have not yet been wholly told,-
Have not been wholly sung nor said.
For his thought that never stops,

Follows the water-drops

Down to the graves of the dead,

Down through chasms and gulphs profound,

To the dreary fountain-head

Of lakes and rivers under ground;

And sees them, when the rain is done,

On the bridge of colours seven

Climbing up once more to heaven

Opposite the setting sun.

Thus the Seer,

With vision clear,

Sees forms appear and disappear.

In the perpetual round of strange,

Mysterious change

From birth to death, from death to birth,

From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth,

Till glimpses more sublime

Of things, unseen before,

Unto his wondering eyes reveal

The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel

Turning for evermore

In the rapid and rushing river of Time.

THE OCCULTATION OF ORION.

I SAW, as in a dream sublime,
The balance in the hand of Time.
O'er East and West its beam impended
And day, with all its hours of light,
Was slowly sinking out of sight,
While, opposite, the scale of night
Silently with the stars ascended.

Like the astrologers of eld,
In that bright vision I beheld
Greater and deeper mysteries.
I saw, with its celestial keys,
Its chords of air, its frets of fire,
The Samian's great Æolian lyre,
Rising through all its sevenfold bars,
From earth unto the fixed stars.
And through the dewy atmosphere,
Not only could I see, but hear,
Its wondrous and harmonious strings,
In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere,
From Dian's circle light and near,
Onward to vaster and wider rings,
Where, chanting through his beard of snows,
Majestic, mournful Saturn goes,

And down the sunless realms of space
Reverberates the thunder of his bass.
Beneath the sky's triumphal arch
This music sounded like a march,
And with its chorus seemed to be
Preluding some great tragedy.
Sirius was rising in the east;
And, slow, ascending one by one,
The kindling constellations shone.