Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CAPTIVITY. "YTTTHEN yellow leaves are flickering on a bough, We have not strength to reach, to be debarred From such poor prize we mourn not; but 'tis hard To see the joyous wreaths of roses blow Swinging upon the breeze, and we laid low In weakness, only look with sad regard At the ungathered, long desired reward Of patient hours, watching the spring tide grow To perfect summer;—so we estimate, Not by its hours of weariness and pain, Not by the galling pressure of its chain, The mournful weight of sickness, but by all The joys from which it holds us separate, So near, and yet beyond our grasp, our call. CAPTIVITY. f LOOK abroad upon the meadow land, Where once your feet in careless pastime strayed, Ye, who in irksome idleness are laid Apart from the world's work by God's command, And say, when once your eager, wasteful hand Among its hedge-row blooms and garlands played, Was then the tenderness of light and shade Sweeping across its breadth, as sweet as grand, Unto your eyes, that through a mist of tears Behold it now, fair region far away ? For joy in sorrow seemeth brightest aye, And with the sense of loss the soul reveres Beauties once lightly held, that scarcely won Thankful response for their kind benison. CAPTIVITY. TN darkness—when around his life the gloom Of sickness gathered secretly and slow, As twilight in the spring, mysterious, low Yet clear as music in a silent room— A voice came unto him, " O thou to whom God hath appointed rest, when thou would'st go So gladly forth to work, yet may'st not know Ease in that seeming rest; life's opening bloom, Exchanging for a life that seems to lie Within Death's shadow; hearken, while I tell Things all unheard save in the hush of night, The earth being held apart, invisible; And when the morning breaks up...