Sweet day of rest when toil is past,
  When hearts can lay their burdens by
And feel the peace God’s angels cast
  In isleward flights from his fair sky! 
Sweet isle of love where fancy dwells,
  And nature knows no pang of care,
I hear the music of its bells
  Far floating on the evening air.

I hear the lonely shepherd’s song
  Flow down the green and mossy vale,
And westward all the calm night long
  The restless sea gulls sail. 
I sometimes turn towards the stars
  With sudden shock of glad surprise,
And half believe these island bars
  Are but the gates to Paradise.

AT KEY’S GRAVE.

I stood one summer, friend, beside
  The foam waves of a distant sea
That muttered all the summer through
  A low sweet threnody.

A mournful song was ever on
  The lips that it were death to kiss,
A song for those who died as died
  The brave at ancient Salamis.

A thousand graves lay in the trough
  Of that great ocean of the East,
A thousand souls fled through its foam
  Towards the starlit land of peace.

And for each ship-wrecked soul that slept
  Beneath the dark inconstant waves
The wind gave songs in memory
  Of men true-hearted, pure and brave.

But I have stood, sweet-singer, by
  Thy lonely, unmarked grave to-day,
And all the songs thy memory got
  Came from the branches in their sway.

Ah, peace! ah, love! ah, friendship true! 
  No wreath rests here wove by your hands
To mark the Poet’s silent tomb. 
  As tombs are marked in other lands.

But in my noon-day dream there came
  From the fair bosom of the hills
The voice of some sweet psalmist, thus—­
  “’Tis so God wills, ’tis so God wills.”

THE ETERNAL LIFE.

I care not for the life that is,
I think not of the things that are;
    I live, oh! soul of tenderness,
    Beneath an angel blessedness
That draws its light from one small star.

I know not if the world be ill,
I care not for its throb of pain,
    I live, oh heart, in fellowship
    With other hearts that rise and dip
In the great sea that floods the main

From east to west with tides of love—­
The ocean of Eternal Life,
    Whose waves flow ever free and warm
    From land of snow to land of palm
And heal the naked wounds of strife.

I only know God’s law is just,
And that is all we need to know,
    I live down creeds of hate and spite,
    I build the nobler creeds of right
That beautify our beings so.

The days are brief that come apace,
When morn wakes up and night sinks down,
    But far beyond the hills of jet
    The glory of the sweet sunset
Lights all the steeples of the town