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ONLY CHRIST

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 26, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 9.

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ONLY CHRIST.

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

WHEN some beloved voice that was to you Both sound and sweetness, faileth sudden, And silence against which you dare not cry, Aches round you like a strange disease and new, What hope? what help? what music will undo That silence to your sense? Not friendship's sigh— Not reason's subtle count, not melody Of viols, nor pipes that Faunus blew, Nor songs of poets, nor of nightingales, Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress trees To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws Self-chanted, nor the angel's sweet All hails Met in the smile of God. Nay, none of these, Speak Thou, availing Christ! and fill this pause. —Elizabeth Barrett Browning.