Speak to me as to Mary at thy feet--
And if no precious gums my hands bestow,
Let my tears drop like amber, while I go
In reach of thy divinest voice complete
In humanest affection--thus, in sooth
To lose the sense of losing! As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore,
Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth;
Till sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
He sleeps the faster that he wept before.
Gladly would I next give myself to the exposition of several of the poems
of her husband, Robert Browning, especially the _Christmas Eve_ and
_Easter Day_; in the first of which he sets forth in marvellous rhymes
the necessity both for widest sympathy with the varied forms of
Christianity, and for individual choice in regard to communion; in the
latter, what it is to choose the world and lose the life. But this would
take many pages, and would be inconsistent with the plan of my book.
When I have given two precious stanzas, most wise as well as most lyrical
and lovely, from the poems of our honoured Charles Kingsley, I shall turn
to the other of the classes into which the devout thinkers of the day
have divided.
A FAREWELL.
My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey;
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
For every day.
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