THE POET'S MINISTERS.

Oh, my soul! the draught is bitter Yet it must be sweetly drunken: Heart and soul! the grinding fetter Galls, yet have ye never shrunken: Heart and soul, and pining spirit, Fail me not! no coward weakness Such as ye are should inherit— Be ye strong even in your meekness.

Born were ye to these strange uses, To brief joy and crushing ill, To small good and great abuses; Yet oh, yield not, till they kill. The stag wounded runneth steady With his blood in streams a-gushing; Soul and spirit, be ye ready For the arrows toward ye rushing.