Spirits of elfin power the earth are haunting,
Silently joining in the fairy bout:
The hour of ban and spell will soon be here;
Closed be each mortal eye and mortal ear.
TWELVE.
The solemn glory of the midnight rests
Upon the mountain tops; the golden light,
Grown silvery, and intensely pure, invests
The earth with beauty, strangely, grandly bright.
A touch, as out of heaven, falls upon
The key-notes of the spirit, pressing out
A hymn of awe and sweetness! as if one,
An angel hidden in the soul, should shout,
"Oh, beautiful! that sittest on the throne
Of midnight in the heaven, I worship thee!"
And the pure spiritual in man mounts up,
Yet with an humble reverence, solemnly;
Expanding and increasing in its scope.
The lone, pure, queenly midnight, that enshrines
God, and the angels in the earthly soul;
Midnight the glorious—how fair she shines,
Writing with jewels on night's dark blue scroll.
VISION OF THE POOR.
"I had a dream that was not all a dream"—
I saw the Poor, the sad and struggling Poor,
Buffeting with the waves of Life's dark stream,
And anon sinking to rise nevermore.
I saw all forms of suffering that come
From the unequal fortunes of the world;
I saw the Book of Death all writ with doom,
And saw the victims to their destinies hurled.
