XXXIII.

O THOU that after toil and storm

Mayst seem to have reached a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,

Nor cares to fix itself to form,

Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse

A life that leads melodious days.

Her faith through form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good.
O, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!

See, thou that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev'n for want of such a type.

XXXIV.

My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live forevermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,

And dust and ashes all that is;

This round of green, this orb of flame,
Fantastic beauty; such as lurks
In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.

What then were God to such as I?

'Twere hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use

A little patience ere I die.

"Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness, and to cease.

XXXV.

YET if some voice that man could trust
Should murmur from the narrow house :
"The cheeks drop in; the body bows;
Man dies nor is there hope in dust:"

Might I not say? "yet even here,

But for one hour, Oh Love, I strive To keep so sweet a thing alive:" But I should turn mine ears and hear

The moanings of the homeless sea,

The sound of streams that, swift or slow,
Draw down Æonian hills, and sow

The dust of continents to be;

And Love would answer, with a sigh,

"The sound of that forgetful shore

Will change my sweetness more and more, Half dead to know that I shall die."

O me! what profits it to put

An idle case? If Death were seen
At first as Death, Love had not been,

Or been in narrowest working shut,

Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,
Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape

Had bruised the herb and crushed the grape, And basked and battened in the woods.

XXXVI.

THOUGH truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;

For wisdom dealt with mortal powers, Where Truth in closest words shall fail, When Truth embodied in a tale

Shall enter in at lowly doors.

And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds,

More strong than all poetic thought;

Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.

XXXVII.

URANIA speaks with darkened brow: "Thou pratest here where thou art least; This faith has many a purer priest,

And many an abler voice, than thou;

"Go down beside thy native rill,

On thy Parnassus set thy feet,
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet

About the ledges of the hill.”

And my Melpomene replies,

A touch of shame upon her cheek: "I am not worthy ev'n to speak Of thy prevailing mysteries:

"For I am but an earthly Muse, And owning but a little art

To lull with song an aching heart, And render human love his dues;

"But brooding on the dear one dead, And all he said of things divine, (And dear to me as sacred wine

To dying lips is all he said,)

"I murmured, as I came along,

Of comfort clasped in truth revealed; And loitered in the master's field, And darkened sanctities with song."

XXXVIII.

WITH weary steps I loiter on,
Though always under altered skies
The purple from the distance dies,

My prospect and horizon gone.

No joy the blowing season gives,
The herald melodies of spring,
But in the songs I love to sing
A doubtful gleam of solace lives.

If any care for what is here

Survive in spirits rendered free, Then are these songs I sing of thee Not all ungrateful to thine ear.

XXXIX.

COULD we forget the widowed hour, And look on Spirits breathed away, As on a maiden in the day

When first she wears her orange-flower!

When crowned with blessing she doth rise
To take her latest leave of home,

And hopes and light regrets that come
Make April of her tender eyes;

And doubtful joys the father move,

And tears are on the mother's face,
As parting, with a long embrace,

She enters other realms of love;

Her office there to rear, to teach,
Becoming, as is meet and fit,
A link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each;
And, doubtless, unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruit
In such great offices as suit
The full-grown energies of heaven.
Ay me, the difference I discern !

How often shall her old fireside

Be cheered with tidings of the bride!

How often she herself return,

And tell them all they would have told,

And bring her babe, and make her boast,
Till even those that missed her most

Shall count new things as dear as old!

But thou and I have shaken hands,

Till growing winters lay me low; My paths are in the fields I know, And thine in undiscovered lands.

XL.

THY spirit, ere our fatal loss,

Did ever rise from high to higher;
As mounts the heavenward altar-fire,
As flies the lighter through the gross.

VOL. II.

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