"He knew them all—the doubt, the strife,
The faint perplexing dread,
The mists that hang o'er parting life,
All darkened round His head;
And the Deliverer knelt to pray,
Yet passed it not, that cup, away.
It passed not—though the stormy wave
Had sunk beneath His tread;
It passed not—though to Him the grave
Had yielded up its dead.
But there was sent Him from on high
A gift of strength for man to die.
And was His mortal hour beset
With anguish and dismay?—
How may we meet our conflict yet,
In the dark, narrow way?
How, but through Him, that path who trod?
Save, or we perish, Son of God!"
We are thankful to find that the poetess had such clear views of the atonement as those to be met with in her Sonnets, Devotional and Memorial, for example, in "The Darkness of the Crucifixion."
The last quotation shall be one from "The Graves of a Household," the opening and the closing verses of a literary gem which will never lack appreciation:—
"They grew in beauty side by side,
They filled one home with glee;—
Their graves are severed far and wide.
By mount, and stream, and sea.
The same fond mother bent at night
O'er each fair sleeping brow;
She had each folded flower in sight—
Where are those dreamers now'?
* * * * *
And parted thus they rest, who played
Beneath the same green tree;
Whose voices mingled as they prayed
Around one parent knee!
They that with smiles lit up the hall,
And cheered with song the hearth!
Alas, for love! if thou wert all,
And nought beyond, O Earth."