POETRY.

"THE MONOLOGUE OF DEATH."

[Those lino. spoken by the Spirit of Death, in the guise of a "white pilgrim," are shared from a tragedy, called "The White Pilgrim," and printed for the first time in their present forml

MISCALL me not ! Mon have miscalled me much ;

Have given harsh names and harsher thoughts to me, Reviled and evilly entreated me, Built me strange temples as an unknown God; Then called me idol, devil, -unclean thing, And to rude insult bowed my godhead down.

Miscall me not I for men have marred my form, And in the earth-born grossness of their thought Have coldly modelled me of their own clay, Then fear to look on that themselves have made.

Miscall me not ! ye know not what I am, But ye shall see me face to face, and know.

I take all sorrows from the sorrowful, And teach the joyful what it is to joy ; I gather in my land-locked harbour's clasp The shattered vessels of a vexed world; And even the tiniest ripple upon Life Is, to my sublime calm, as tropic storm.

When other leecbcraft fails the breaking brain, I, only, own the anodyne to still Its eddies into visionless repose : The face, distorted with Life's latest pang, I smooth, in passing, with an angel-wing ; And from beneath the quiet eyelids steal The hidden glory of the eyes, to give A new and nobler beauty to the rest. 'Belie me not! the plagues that walk the Earth, 'The wasting pain, the sudden agony, Famine, and War, and Pestilence, and all

The terrors that have darkened round my name,—

'These are the plagues of Life,—they are not mine; Vox while I tarry, vanish when I come, Instantly melting into perfect peace, As at His word, whose Master-spirit I am, The troubled waters slept on Galilee.

When I withdraw the veil which hides my face, .So melt I, with a look, the iron bonds 'Of the soul's gaoler, hard Mortality. Gently—so gently—like a tired child, Will I enfold thee ; but thou canst not look Upon my face, and stay. In the busy haunts 'Of human life—in the temple and the street, , And when the blood runs fullest in the veins— Unseen, undreamed of, I am often by, Divided from the giant in his strength .But by the thickness of this misty veil.

'Tender, I am, not cruel; when I take The shape most hard to human eyes, and pluck 'ThO little baby-blossom yet mablown, "Tis but to graft it on a kindlier stem, And leaping o'er the perilous years of growth, Unswept of sorrow, and unscathed of wrong,

Clothe it at once with rich maturity,.

'".Pie I that give a soul to Memory ; For round the follies of the bad I throw 'The mantle of a kind forgetfulness ; While, canonised in dear Love's calendar, I sanctify the good for evermore.

Miscall me not I my generous fullness lends Home to the homeless ; to the friendless, friends ; To the starved babe, the mother's tender breast ; Wealth to the poor, and to the restless,—Rest.

HERMAN C, MERIVALE.