Where the stems stand dividing the winnowed sunlight,

Where the green floor is dappled with soft warm moss, and the swift hum of the bee is heard, And the air glides through like a gracious spirit inbreathing beauty,

I walk - meditating the voiceless children, drawing them to myself with deep unearthly love.

Come unto me, O yearning and inarticulate (for whom so many ages I have waited), Breathing your lives out like a long unuttered

prayer,

Come unto me: and I will give you rest.

For I am not the woods nor the grass nor the bending ferns;

Nor any pale moonlight spirit of these;

And I am not the air;

Nor the light multitudinous life therein;
Nor the sun and its radiant warmth;

But I am one who include — and am greater

One (out of thousands) who hold all these, embosomed,

Safe in my heart: fear not.

In your eyes deep-looking I will touch you so as to be free from all pain;

Where the last interpretations are, in the uttermost recesses, I will reach you;

Utterance at length shall your pent-up spirit have, To pour out all that is in you- to speak and be not afraid.

Dear brother, listen!

I am no shadow, no fickle verse-maker's fiction, Many are the words which are not spoken, but here there is speech;

Many are the words which are not spoken, but in due time all shall be spoken:

There is neither haste nor delay, but all shall be spoken.

Come up into the fragrant woods and walk with

me.

The voices of the trees and the silent-growing grass and waving ferns ascend;

Beyond the birth-and-death veil of the seasons they ascend and are born again;

The voices of the trees and the silent-growing cry of the heart - they too ascend into new perpetual birth.

All is interpreted anew:

In man the cataracts descend, and the winds blow, and autumn reddens and ripens;

And in the woods a spirit walks which is not wholly of the woods,

But which looks out over the wide Earth and draws to itself all men with deep unearthly love.

Come, walk with me:

On the soft moss-though you guess not my arm is about you

By the white stems where the gracious air is breathing,

On the green floor, through the pale green winnowed sunlight,

Walk and leave all to me.

Edward Carpenter

O DREAMY, GLOOMY, FRIENDLY TREES!

DREAMY, gloomy, friendly trees,
I came along your narrow track
To bring my gifts unto your knees
And gifts did you give back;

For when I brought this heart that burns.
These thoughts that bitterly repine-
And laid them here among the ferns
And the hum of boughs divine,

Ye, vastest breathers of the air,

Shook down with slow and mighty poise Your coolness on the human care,

Your wonder on its toys,

Your greenness on the heart's despair,
Your darkness on its noise.

Herbert Trench

WILL

CHORUS

FROM The Bacchae

ILL they ever come to me, ever again,
The long long dances,

On through the dark till the dim stars wane?
Shall I feel the dew on my throat, and the

stream

Of wind in my hair? Shall our white feet gleam

In the dim expanses?

Oh, feet of a fawn to the greenwood fled,
Alone in the grass and the loveliness;
Leap of the hunted, no more in dread,

Beyond the snares and the deadly press:
Yet a voice still in the distance sounds,
A voice and a fear and a haste of hounds;

O wildly laboring, fiercely fleet,
Onward yet by river and glen. .

Is it joy or terror, ye storm-swift feet? ... To the dear lone lands, untroubled of men, Where no voice sounds, and amid the shadowy

green

The little things of the woodland live unseen.

What else is Wisdom? What of man's endeavor Or God's high grace, so lovely and so great? To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait;

To hold a hand uplifted over Hate;

And shall not Loveliness be loved forever?

O Strength of God, slow art thou and still,
Yet failest never!

On them that worship the Ruthless Will,
On them that dream, doth His judgment wait.
Dreams of the proud man, making great

And greater ever,

Things which are not of God. In wide
And devious coverts, hunter-wise,
He coucheth Time's unhasting stride,
Following, following, him whose eyes
Look not to Heaven. For all is vain,
The pulse of the heart, the plot of the brain,
That striveth beyond the laws that live.
And is thy Faith so much to give,

Is it so hard a thing to see,

That the Spirit of God, whate'er it be, The Law that abides and changes not, ages long, The Eternal and Nature-born

these things be

strong?

What else is Wisdom? What of man's endeavor

Or God's high grace so lovely and so great? To stand from fear set free, to breathe and

wait;

To hold a hand uplifted over Hate;

And shall not Loveliness be loved forever?

Happy he, on the weary sea

Who hath fled the tempest and won the haven.
Happy whoso hath risen, free,

Above his striving. For strangely graven
Is the orb of life, that one and another
In gold and power may outpass his brother.
And men in their millions float and flow
And seethe with a million hopes as leaven;
And they win their Will, or they miss their
Will,

And the hopes are dead or are pined for still;
But whoe'er can know,

As the long days go,

That To Live is happy, has found his Heaven!

Accipiant, caelique vias et sidera monstrent,
Defectus solis varios, lunaeque labores;

Unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant
Obiicibus ruptis rursusque in se ipsa residant,
Quid tantum Oceano properent se tinguere soles
Hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.