One only knows.  Yet if the fret
Of thy weak heart, in weak regret
Needs a more tender comfort yet: 

Then thou mayst take thy loneliest fears,
The bitterest drops of all thy tears,
The dreariest hours of all thy years;

And through thy anguish there outspread,
May ask that God’s great love would shed
Blessings on one beloved head.

And thus thy soul shall learn to draw
Sweetness from out that loving law
That sees no failure and no flaw,

Where all is good.  And life is good,
Were the one lesson understood
Of its most sacred brotherhood.

VERSE:  A CHANGELING

A little changeling spirit
Crept to my arms one day: 
I had no heart or courage
To drive the child away.

So all day long I soothed her,
And hushed her on my breast;
And all night long her wailing
Would never let me rest.

I dug a grave to hold her,
A grave both dark and deep;
I covered her with violets,
And laid her there to sleep.

I used to go and watch there,
Both night and morning too:-
It was my tears, I fancy,
That kept the violets blue.

I took her up:  and once more
I felt the clinging hold,
And heard the ceaseless wailing
That wearied me of old.

I wandered, and I wandered,
With my burden on my breast,
Till I saw a church-door open,
And entered in to rest.

In the dim, dying daylight,
Set in a flowery shrine,
I saw the Virgin Mother
Holding her Child divine.

I knelt down there in silence,
And on the Altar-stone
I laid my wailing burden,
And came away—­alone.

And now that little spirit,
That sobbed so all day long,
Is grown a shining Angel,
With wines both wide and strong.

She watches me from Heaven,
With loving, tender care,
And one day she has promised
That I shall find her there.

VERSE:  DISCOURAGED

Where the little babbling streamlet
First springs forth to light,
Trickling through soft velvet mosses,
Almost hid from sight;
Vowed I with delight,—­
“River, I will follow thee,
Through thy wanderings to the Sea!”

Gleaming ’mid the purple heather,
Downward then it sped,
Glancing through the mountain gorges,
Like a silver thread,
As it quicker fled,
Louder music in its flow,
Dashing to the Vale below.

Then its voice grew lower, gentler,
And its pace less fleet,
Just as though it loved to linger
Round the rushes’ feet,
As they stooped to meet
Their clear images below,
Broken by the ripples’ flow.

Purple Willow-herb bent over
To her shadow fair;
Meadow-sweet, in feathery clusters,
Perfumed all the air;
Silver-weed was there,
And in one calm, grassy spot,
Starry, blue Forget-me-not.