WEARY IN WELL-DOING.

WOULD have gone; God bade me stay:

I would have worked; God bade me rest.
He broke my will from day to day,
He read my yearnings unexpressed
And said them nay.

Now I would stay; God bids me go:
Now I would rest; God bids me work.
He breaks my heart tossed to and fro,
My soul is wrung with doubts that lurk
And vex it so.

I go, Lord, where Thou sendest me;
Day after day I plod and moil;
But, Christ my God, when will it be
That I may let alone my toil

And rest with Thee?

MISS ROSSETTI.

TO MY OWN PORTRAIT.

OW is it that before mine eyes,
While gazing on thy mien,

All my past years of life arise,
As in a mirror seen ?

What spell within thee hath been shrined, To image back my own deep mind?

Even as a song of other times,

Can trouble Memory's springs; Even as a sound of vesper-chimes, Can wake departed things;

Even as a scent of vernal flowers

Hath records fraught with vanished hours;

Such power is thine!-they come, the dead, From the grave's bondage free,

TO MY OWN PORTRAIT.

And smiling back the changed are led,

To look in love on thee;

And voices that are music flown

Speak to me in the heart's full tone,

Till crowding thoughts my soul oppress,
The thoughts of happier years,
And a vain gush of tenderness
O'erflows in child-like tears;

A passion which I may not stay,
A sudden fount that must have way.

But thou, the while-oh, almost strange,

Mine imaged self! it seems

That on thy brow of peace no change
Reflects my own swift dreams:

Almost I marvel not to trace

Those lights and shadows in thy face.

To see thee calm, while powers thus deep,
Affection-Memory—Grief—

Pass o'er my soul as winds that sleep

O'er a frail aspen-leaf!

Oh! that the quiet of thine eye

Might sink there when the storm goes by!

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184

TO MY OWN PORTRAIT

Yet look thou still serenely on;

And if sweet friends there be,

That when my song and soul are gone
Shall seek my form in thee,--

Tell them of One for whom 'twas best

To "flee away and be at rest!

MRS. HEMANS.

HE number of Thine own complete,

Sum up and make an end;

Sift clean the chaff, and house the wheat,

And then, O Lord, descend.

Descend, and solve by that descent

This mystery of life;

Where good and ill together blent,

Wage an undying strife.

For rivers twain are gushing still
And pour a mingled flood;
Good in the very depths of ill,

Ill in the heart of good.