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.