While each on other casts a wondering glance?
Behold! 'Tis here!

'Tis here, 'tis here! the quivering light
Rests on each head; what floods of ecstasy
Throng in our veins with wondrous might!
The future dawns; the flood-gates open free;
Resistless pours the mighty Word;
Now as a herald's call, now whisperingly,
Its tone is heard.

Oh Light, oh Comforter, but there
Alas! and but to them art Thou revealed
And not to us, not everywhere
Where drooping souls for comfort have appealed!
I yearn for day that never breaks;
Oh shine, before this eye is wholly sealed,
Which weeps and wakes.

* * * * *

THE HOUSE IN THE HEATH[35] (1841)

Beneath yon fir trees in the west,
The sunset round it glowing,
A cottage lies like bird on nest,
With thatch roof hardly showing.

And there across the window-sill
Leans out a white-starred heifer;
She snorts and stamps; then breathes her fill
Of evening's balmy zephyr.

Near-by reposes, hedged with thorn,
A garden neatly tended;
The sunflower looks about with scorn;
The bell-flower's head is bended.

And in the garden kneels a child,
She weeds or merely dallies,
A lily plucks with gesture mild
And wanders down the alleys.

A shepherd group in distance dim
Lie stretched upon the heather,
And with a simple evening hymn
Wake the still breeze together.

And from the roomy threshing hall
The hammer strokes ring cheery,
The plane gives forth a crunching drawl,
The rasping saw sounds weary.

The evening star now greets the scene
And smoothly soars above it,
And o'er the cottage stands serene;
He seems in truth to love it.

A vision with such beauty crowned,
Had pious monks observed it,
They straight upon a golden ground
Had painted and preserved it.

The carpenter, the herdsmen there
A pious choral sounding;
The maiden with the lily fair,
And peace the whole surrounding;

The wondrous star that beams on all
From out the fields of heaven--
May it not be that in the stall
The Christ is born this even?

[Illustration: HANS AM ENDE THE FARM HOUSE]

* * * * *

THE BOY ON THE MOOR[36] (1841)

'Tis an eerie thing o'er the moor to fare
When the eddies of peat-smoke justle,
When the wraiths of mist whirl here and there
And wind-blown tendrils t