THE FERN SONG Dance to the beat of the rain, little Fern, And spread out your palms again, And say, "Tho' the Sun Hath my vesture spun, He hath labored, alas, in vain, But for the shade That the Cloud hath made, And the gift of the Dew and the Rain.

And his silence was very natural, for it occurred to him to reflect that Antony possessed the lictors and the purple-bordered vesture in accordance with the customs of our ancestors in regard to masters of horse, and that he was using the sword and the soldiers perforce against the rebels.

It displayed, in a green vesture not unlike his own, but with a gold ribbon and emerald symbol like the cross of an European knighthood over the right shoulder, a spare soldierly form, with the most striking countenance I have ever seen; one which, once seen, none could forget.

He is there, He whom unseen we love; no need of light; His tender eyes illume the crystal air Where His beloved walk in vesture white, What though on earth they wandered, poor, distressed, And saw through tears His glory, now they rest.

That in her eyes you saw angelic fire, Pure from the dross, the dimming clouds of earth, Deem'd now her frame ethereal, unakin To earth's clay-moulded fabricssuch, perchance, As entering heaven, might have left its dust At the bright folding portals, sandal-like, And thence, repassing in seraphic trance, Still left unclaim'd the vesture at the gate!

Tell me, my Mabel, if within this sleep, To which mine art oft leads thee, there should come Some angel bright with Heaven's reflected light, Wooing thee upward with the songs of bliss, Tell me, my Mabel, wouldst thou freely go, Leaving this fair earth-vesture only here, Leaving me lornly gazing on the sky, Blotting its sun out with my blinding tears?

Now the stream laps my vesture hem; Back thou from my sad bosom to the world, Leaving me here this current cold to stem; Soon from thy sight shall I be swiftly whirl'd Into the mystic darknessnever fear!

Alas, Farewell, and Nevermore sighed from those hollow cheeks, those woebegone eyes, those pallid lips, that willow-like long hair, and the sad vesture of the forsaken Dido.

" The mists had congregated about the distant mountain-side, and there were seen the grand and awful features of the Great Stone Face, awful but benignant, as if a mighty angel were sitting among the hills, and enrobing himself in a cloud-vesture of gold and purple.

Moreouer he deliuereth vnto him the Chisua Talnabi, which signifieth in the Arabian tongue, The garment of the Prophet: this vesture is of silke, wrought in the midst with letters of golde, which signifie: La illa ill'alla

Now this procession proceeding from the castle towardes the Mosquita, the Camels which bring the vestures are all adorned with cloth of golde, with many little belles, and passing along the streete you may see the multitude casting vpon the said vesture thousands of beautifull flowers of diuers colours, and sweete water, others bringing towels and fine cloth touch the same, which euer after they keepe as reliques with great reuerence.

From them I firmly believe they may derive sufficient rules whereby to separate in foreign books the true from the false, the necessary from the accidental, the eternal truth from its peculiar national vesture.

"And summer was the tide, and sweet the hour, When sire and daughter saw, with fleet descent, An Indian from his bark approach their bower, Of buskin'd limb and swarthy lineament; The red wild feathers on his brow were blent, And bracelets bound the arm that help'd to light A boy, who seem'd, as he beside him went, Of Christian vesture and complexion bright, Led by his dusty guide, like morning brought by night.

The V-shaped vesture gives her a longer waist, and the long lines of the revers add to the length of her skirt.

But the coalheaver always sticks close to the attire of his station; he alone wears the consistent and befitting garb of his forefathers; he alone has not discarded "the napless vesture of humility," to follow the always expensive, and often absurd fashions of his superiors.

All the stages of the journey,all the forms which cross or overtake the pilgrims,giants and hobgoblins, ill-favoured ones, and shining ones,the tall, comely, swarthy Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the money,the black man in the bright vesture,Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, and my Lord Hategood,Mr. Talkative, and Mrs. Timorous,all are actually existing beings to us.

The quick breath parts her laughing lips, The white neck shines through tossing curls; Her vesture gently sways and dips, As on she speeds in shell-like whorls.

Their distinctive speech was of Church and priesthood, of Sacraments and services, as the vesture under the varied folds of which the Form of the Divine Redeemer was to be exhibited to the world in a way capable of, and suited for, transmission by a collective body from generation to generation.

"All we see is but the vesture of God, and what we call laws of nature are but attributes of Deity."

He found "harmony in immortal souls, spite of the muddy vesture of decay.

It seems a gigantic statement for even nature to make, all in one mighty stone word, apprehended at once like a burst of light, celestial color its natural vesture, coming in glory to mind and heart as to a home prepared for it from the very beginning.

ERDGEIST, the Spirit of the Earth, represented in Goethe's "Faust" as assiduously weaving, at the Time-Loom, night and day, in death as well as life, the earthly vesture of the Eternal, and thereby revealing the Invisible to mortal eyes.

"He was," says he, "king of himself and his world;... his faculties and feelings were not fettered or prostrated under the iron sway of Passion, but led and guided in kindly union under the mild sway of Reason; as the fierce primeval elements of chaos were stilled at the coming of Light, and bound together, under its soft vesture, into a glorious and beneficent Creation."

Now the moon is up in beauty, Walking on a starry hight, While her trailing vesture brightens The gray hollows of the night.

I stood up, and remained long lost in the imagination of the change that creature had undergone, and in the tremendous overwhelming consciousness of the deliverance God had granted the soul whose cast-off vesture of decay lay at my feet.