COMFORT.
Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet,
From out the hallelujahs sweet and low,
Lest I should fear and fall, and miss thee so,
Who art not missed by any that entreat.
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.