James Ryder Randall

“ It’s wave-lips stirr’d with the babble of a bird
As a psalm and a psalter for Joilet.
And then uprolled from the rafter’s mold,
Come the dear ones, the departed—
The fair and old ’neath the marigold,
The bold and the broken-hearted—
Till I shudder to think how we rabble on the brink
Of the early broken-hearted.
In mystic trance of my old Romance,
I let all my sorrow and sin go;
Forgetting the graves as they glance and dance
Down—down through the ghastly window—
With column and cross and banners of moss,
Down—down through the Oriel Window. ”

“ Ah, ’tis not meet that one so sweet
Should ever be moody and mournful.
She tells, I wist, the beads on her wrist,
With a gentle, lyrical motion;
And she seems in a mist when the Eucharist
Is soared for the people’s devotion ”