LONELY BROTHER

Art thou lonely, O my

brother?

Share thy little with another!
Stretch a hand to one unfriended,

And thy loneliness is ended.
So both thou and he

Shall less lonely be.

And of thy one loneliness

Shall come two's great happiness.

COMFORT YE!

"Comfort ye, my people!”
Saith your God,-

"And be ye comforted!
And-be-ye-comforted!"

Roughly my plough did plough you,
Sharp were my strokes, and sore,
But nothing less could bow you,
Nothing less could your souls restore
To the depths and the heights of my longing,
To the strength you had known before.

For-you were falling, falling,
Even the best of you,

Falling from your high calling;

And this, My test of you,

Has been for your souls' redemption

From the little things of earth,

What seemed to you death's agony

Was but a greater birth.

COMFORT YE! (continued)

And now you shall have gladness
For the years you have seen ill;
Give up to Me your sadness,
And I your cup will fill.

S. ELIZABETH'S LEPER

"My lord, there came unto the gate One, in such pitiful estate,

So all forlorn and desolate,

Ill-fed, ill-clad, of ills compact;
A leper too, his poor flesh wracked
And dead, his very bones infect;
Of all God's sons none so abject.
I could not, on the Lord's own day,
Turn such a stricken one away.
In pity him I took, and fed,
And happed him in our royal bed."

"A leper!-in our bed!-Nay then,
My Queen, thy charities do pass
The bounds of sense at times! A bane
On such unwholesome tenderness!
Dost nothing owe to him who shares
Thy couch, and suffers by thy cares?
He could have slept upon the floor,
And left you still his creditor.
A leper!-in my bed!-God's truth!
Out upon such outrageous ruth!"

S. ELIZABETH'S LEPER (continued)

He strode in anger towards the bed,
And lo!-

The Christ, with thorn-crowned head,
Lay there in sweet sleep pillowèd.