"I'm in the dark!" cried little Josephine,
⁠A saucy maiden of but summers three;
The lamp was out, the grey dawn yet unseen—
⁠"I'm in the dark! I'm in the dark!" said she.

"I'm in the dark!" Yet fear not, little one,
⁠Those are beside thee who for thee would die;
The night, midwinter deep, will soon be gone,
⁠And the glad day stand in the eastern sky.

Light is thy wish, and in that wish we share—
⁠"Light, light, more light!" "O Lord, that I may see!"
Some, for unholy uses make the prayer,
⁠And some, that they the nearer heaven may be.

Some would uplift the curtain of the year,
⁠And clutch its secrets with irreverent hand,
That barn and press may burst with autumn gear,
⁠Or they among earth's foremost princes stand.

And some would lift the veil of flesh, and see
⁠If all be real on the other side,
If truth be spoken of the One in Three,
⁠Or if the seers of Jewry raved and lied.

And some, more happy, of the night complain,
⁠"It is far spent, and yet there is no day;"
Weary and sad they watch the window-pane—
⁠"When will He come? Oh, why so long away?"

"I'm in the dark!" My darling, so are all,
⁠Save those blest spirits who have fought and won;
Light shines upon them there behind the pall,
⁠Light uncreated, brighter than the sun.

"I'm in the dark!" Ah me, that wild lament
⁠Will one day be the ruined spirits' wail,
When all the lamps of love and grace are spent,
⁠And not one ray to pierce hell's awful veil!

Like thine, my child, our terrors and our cares
⁠Are of mere trifles, sickness, want, and pain.
A holier fear, in answer to our prayers,
⁠Give, Lord, and light to make the highway plain;

Light, as we need it, step by step to tread
⁠The road to us allotted, strait and steep,
The thorny waste with cloud and storm o'erspread,
⁠Then death's drear pass, and heaven's all-crystal keep.

"Drop me a feather out of the blue,
⁠Bird flying up to the sun:"
Higher and higher the skylark flew,
⁠But dropped he never a one.

"Only a feather I ask of thee
⁠Fresh from the purer air:"
Upward the lark flew bold and free
⁠To heaven, and vanished there.
 
Only the sound of a rapturous song
⁠Throbbed in the tremulous light;
Only a voice could linger long
⁠At such a wondrous height.

"Drop me a feather!" but while I cry,
⁠Lo! like a vision fair,
The bird from the heart of the glowing sky
⁠Sinks through the joyous air.

Downward sinking and singing alone,
⁠But the song which was glad above
Takes ever a deeper and dearer tone,
⁠For it trembles with earthly love.
 
And the feather I asked from the boundless heaven
⁠Were a gift of little worth;
For oh what a boon by the lark is given
⁠When he brings all heaven to earth!

Three houses all alike, all piteous
⁠With winking windows and a midday gloom,
All choked with London fog, and hideous
⁠With monster sideboard in the dining-room;
⁠Alike, yet all unlike as blight and bloom.
For the first holds fair lady Gwendoline,
⁠Whom I have never seen;
⁠The second bonnie Kate,
⁠Whom I nor love nor hate;
But the third house holds in its heart for me
⁠My little Dorothy.

My lady, dost thou bind thy bright brown hair,
Or dost thou steal adown the noiseless stair?
Love, thou art in the house, and gazing there
⁠I turn to thee.