Thou hast my better years;
  Thou hast my earlier friends, the good, the kind,
    Yielded to thee with tears,—­
  The venerable form, the exalted mind.

    My spirit yearns to bring
  The lost ones back,—­yearns with desire intense,
    And struggles hard to wring
  Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.

    In vain; thy gates deny
  All passage save to those who hence depart;
    Nor to the streaming eye
  Thou giv’st them back,—­nor to the broken heart.

    In thy abysses hide
  Beauty and excellence unknown; to thee
    Earth’s wonder and her pride
  Are gathered, as the waters to the sea;

    Labors of good to man,
  Unpublished charity, unbroken faith,
    Love, that midst grief began,
  And grew with years, and faltered not in death.

    Full many a mighty name
  Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered;
    With thee are silent fame,
  Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.

    Thine for a space are they,—­
  Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last! 
    Thy gates shall yet give way,
  Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!

    All that of good and fair
  Has gone into thy womb from earliest time,
    Shall then come forth, to wear
  The glory and the beauty of its prime.

    They have not perished,—­no! 
  Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet,
    Smiles, radiant long ago,
  And features, the great soul’s apparent seat;

    All shall come back, each tie
  Of pure affection shall be knit again;
    Alone shall Evil die,
  And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.

    And then shall I behold
  Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung,
    And her, who, still and cold,
  Fills the next grave,—­the beautiful and young.

W.C.  BRYANT.

Israfel.

   And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who
   has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.

   —­Koran.

  In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
    Whose heart-strings are a lute;
  None sing so wildly well
  As the angel Israfel,
  And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
  Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
    Of his voice, all mute.

  Tottering above
    In her highest noon,
    The enamored moon
  Blushes with love,
    While, to listen, the red levin
    (With the rapid Pleiads, even,
    Which were seven)
    Pauses in Heaven.

  And they say (the starry choir
    And the other listening things)
  That Israfeli’s fire
  Is owing to that lyre
    By which he sits and sings,—­
  The trembling living wire
  Of those unusual strings.

  But the skies that angel trod,
    Where deep thoughts are a duty,
  Where Love’s a grown-up God,
  Where the Houri glances are
    Imbued with all the beauty
  Which we worship in a star.