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61
We know no other words except 'Our Father,'
And we think that in some pause of angels' song
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
And hold both within His right hand which is strong.
'Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely
(For they call him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,
'Come and rest with me my child.'"
And we think that in some pause of angels' song
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
And hold both within His right hand which is strong.
'Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely
(For they call him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,
'Come and rest with me my child.'"
*****
Another piece included in the collection, "To Flush, my Dog," is of a very different calibre, although replete with excellence in its way. "Flush," the many years canine companion and four-footed friend of the poetess, was a gift from Miss Mitford and, says Elizabeth Barrett, "belongs to the beautiful race she has rendered celebrated among English and American readers. The Flushes have their laurels as well as the Cæsars, the chief difference (at least the very head and front of it) consisting, according to my perception, in the bald head." If Miss Mitford made "Flush" celebrated by her prose, Miss Barrett immortalised it by her poesy. "Loving friend," she writes—
Loving friend, the gift of one,
Who, her own true faith hath run,
Through thy lower nature;
Be my benediction said
With my hand upon thy head,
Gentle fellow creature!
Who, her own true faith hath run,
Through thy lower nature;
Be my benediction said
With my hand upon thy head,
Gentle fellow creature!
Like a lady's ringlets brown,
Flow thy silken oars adown
Either side demurely,
Of thy silver-suited breast
Shining out from all the rest
Of thy body purely.
Flow thy silken oars adown
Either side demurely,
Of thy silver-suited breast
Shining out from all the rest
Of thy body purely.
Darkly brown thy body is,
Till the sunshine, striking this,
Alchemise its dulness,—
Till the sunshine, striking this,
Alchemise its dulness,—
