11 DECEMBER 1880, Page 14

A REPLY.

You ask me, dare I dream a part of me Has right of converse with the Infinite Mind,— I, a dull creature of dull flesh, confined In this mud cabin of mortality, To converse with the Unbounded. Yea, but see The cage-born lark, eternal bars behind, Pining and panting for the sweet west wind, The sunlit sky, the lessening fields, where he Has never warbled. So to us, who stand, Groping all blindly in this gross world's night, Flashes a face, a flower, a sunset, and Our souls at the instant are aflood with light, Till at the last shall come to us a Hand, Which grasping, lo ! we pass from faith to sight.