II.

No! change and chance are slaves that wait
On Him who guides the clouds, not fate,
But the High King rules seas and sun,
He conquers, He, the Mighty One. 
So powerless, ’neath that changeless will,
Oh, heart, be still—­be still!

III.

As a young bird fallen from its nest
Beats wildly the kind hand against
That lifts it up, so tremblingly
Our hearts lie in God’s hand, as He
Uplifts them by His loving will,
Oh, heart, be still—­be still!

IV.

Uplifts them to a perfect peace,
A rest beyond all earthly ease,
’Neath the white shadow of the throne—­
Low nest forever overshone
By tenderest love, our Lord’s dear will;
Oh, heart, be still—­be still!

SQUIRE PERCY’S PRIDE.

The Squire was none of your common men
  Whose ancestors nobody knows,
But visible was his lineage
  In the lines of his Roman nose,
That turned in the true patrician curve—­
  In the curl of his princely lips,
In his slightly insolent eyelids,
  In his pointed finger-tips.

Very erect and grand looked the Squire
  As he walked o’er his broad estate,
For he felt that the earth was honored
  In bearing his honorable weight;
Proudly he strolled through his wooded park
  Deer-haunted and gloomily grand,
Or gazed from his pillared porticoes
  On his far-outlying land.

In a tiny whitewashed cottage,
  Half-covered with roses wild,
His cheerful-faced old gardener dwelt
  Alone with his motherless child;
The Squire owned the very floor he trod,
  The grass in his garden lot,
The poor man had only this one little lamb
  Yet he envied the rich man not.

Poor was the gardener, yet rich withal
  In this priceless pearl of a girl,
So perfect a form, so faultless a face
  Never brightened the halls of an Earl;
Her eyes were two fathomless stars of light,
  And they shone on the Squire day by day,
Till their warm and perilous splendor
  So melted his pride away,

That he fain would have taken this pretty pet lamb
  To dwell in his stately fold,
To fetter it fast with a jeweled chain,
  And cage it with bars of gold;
But this coy little lamb loved its freedom,
  Not so free was she, though, to be true,
But, oh, the dainty and shy little lamb
  Well her master’s voice she knew.

’Twas vain for the Squire the story to tell
  Of his riches and high descent,
As it fell into one rosy shell of an ear
  Out of its mate it went;
How one grim old ancestor into the land
  With William the Conqueror came,
She thought, the sweet, of a conqueror
  She knew with that very name.