Shall he begrudge us, O adored !

These moments from his altar dropped

Or courses of devotion stopped ?

Who with a mist did oft confuse

Our sense, and brought it to a muse,

Or, clouding our souls' vision, hath

Lured them into a temporal path ;

Who to a single end doth move.
Convicting so thy heart of love,

Of love my heart, — which still must doubt,

Sweetly perplexed, in church or out,

Whether its assignation be

In thee with him, in him with thee.
(71 )



The Christian Tear
I

This is the hour, foreseen, foreseen of old,
That first in dreams the Angelic Virtue told
To the Bethesda of our blood which slept :
Now the moons wear and promises are kept.
Now strangers' friendship, having run about
The cunning nerves and soul, is all worked out :
Love merely is in either ; whom between,
No whit unreal because all unseen,
Stirs the New-born, the Child brought forth within
This silver-lanterned shelter of our skin.
Where whispers rustle like heaped straw ; our hands,
Serving that Innocence for swaddling-bands.
Clasp the invisible Immanuel thus :
Lo, the Lord's glory is come in to us !
Faint'st thou ? look up, sweet ! can the Mother of Love
Shrink, be perplexed or afraid thereof ?
Or doubt'st thou if thine honour still shall last
With me, the birth being done and overpast ?
Nay, if I wondered at the first dim sign,
I grow all wonder since thou grow'st all mine !
If first I mused on that which was conceived,
I quite adore since quite I have believed. —
But now awhile soul's rhapsody put by.
And let our thoughts resume their dignity,
Some deputized pomp let them put on.
