To draw, to sheathe a useless sword,

To fool the crowd with glorious lies,

To cleave a creed in sects and cries, To change the bearing of a word,

To shift an arbitrary power,

To cramp the student at his desk,

To make old bareness picturesque And tuft with grass a feudal tower;

Why then my scorn might well descend On you and yours. I see in part

That all, as in some piece of art,

Is toil cöoperant to an end.

CXXIX.

EAR friend, far off, my lost desire,

So far, so near in woe and weal;

O loved the most, when most 1 feel

There is a lower and a higher;

Known and unknown; human, divine;
Sweet human hand and lips and eye;

Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;

Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;

Behold, I dream a dream of good,

And mingle all the world with thee.

CXXX.

HY voice is on the rolling all,

I hear thee where the waters run,

Thou standest in the rising sun,

And in the setting thou art fair.

What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But tho' I seem in star and flower

To feel thee some diffusive power,

I do not therefore love thee less:

My love involves the love before;

My love is vaster passion now;

Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou,

I seem to love thee more and more.

Far off thou art, but ever nigh;

I have thee still, and I rejoice;

I prosper, circled with thy voice;

I shall not lose thee tho' I die.

CXXXI.

LIVING will that shalt endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock,

Rise in the spiritual rock,

Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure,

That we may lift from out of dust

A voice as unto him that hears,

A cry above the conquer'd years To one that with us works, and trust,

With faith that comes of self-control,

The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,

And all we flow from, soul in soul.

TRUE and tried, so well and long,
Demand not thou a marriage lay;

In that it is thy marriage day

Is music more than any song.

Nor have I felt so much of bliss

Since first he told me that he loved

A daughter of our house; nor proved Since that dark day a day like this;

Tho' I since then have number'd o'er

Some thrice three years: they went and came,

Remade the blood and changed the frame,

And yet is love not less, but more;