Oh grace! into unlikeliest hearts
It is thy boast to come
The glory of Thy light to find
In darkest spots a home.
Oh happy, happy that I am!
If thou canst be, O faith
The treasure that thou art in life
What wilt thou be in death?
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STEPPING WESTWARD.
WHILE my fellow-traveler and I were walking by the side of Loch Katrine one fine evening after sunset in our road to a hut where in the course of our tour we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region two well-dressed women, one of whom said to us by way of greeting, "What, you are stepping westward?"
"What, you are stepping westward?"
"Yea."—'Twould be a wildish destiny
If we who thus together roam
In a strange land and far from home
Were in this place the guests of chance:
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a sky to lead him on?
The dewy ground was dark and cold;
Behind, all gloomy to behold:
And stepping westward seemed to be
A kind of heavenly destiny:
I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound
Of something without place and bound,
And seemed to give me spiritual right
To travel through that region bright.
The voice was soft and she who spake
Was walking by her native lake:
The salutation had to me
The very sound of courtesy:
Its power was felt; and while my eye
Was fixed upon the glowing sky,
The echo of the voice enwrought
A human sweetness with the thought
Of traveling through the world that lay
Before me in my endless way.—WORDSWORTH.
The End