Was woven still by the snow-white choir. At last she came to his hermitage,

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage ;-
The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet truth:
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth."-
As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;

I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird ;-
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

THE PROBLEM.

I LIKE a church; I like a cowl;
I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowled churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought,
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;

Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,-
The canticles of love and woe;

The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew ;-
The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?

Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell?
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
As the best gem upon her zone;
And Morning opes with haste her lids,
To gaze upon the Pyramids;

O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye;
For, out of Thought's interior sphere,
These wonders rose to upper air;
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the grass;
Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
And the same power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the fathers wise,--
The Book itself before me lies,
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines.
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowled portrait dear;
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.

THE VISIT.

ASKEST,' How long thou shalt stay'?
Devastator of the day!

Know, each substance, and relation,
Thorough nature's operation,
Hath its unit, bound, and metre;
And every new compound

Is some product and repeater,-
Product of the earlier found.
But the unit of the visit,
The encounter of the wise,-
Say, what other metre is it
Than the meeting of the eyes?
Nature poureth into nature

Through the channels of that feature

Riding on the ray of sight,

Fleeter far than whirlwinds go,

Or for service, or delight,

Hearts to hearts their meaning show,

Sum their long experience,

And import intelligence.

Single look has drained the breast;

Single moment years confessed.

The duration of a glance

Is the term of convenance,

And, though thy rede be church or state,
Frugal multiplies of that.

Speeding Saturn cannot halt;
Linger,-thou shalt rue the fault;
If Love his moment overstay,
Hatred's swift repulsions play.

URIEL.

IT fell in the ancient periods
Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coined itself
Into calendar months and days.
This was the lapse of Uriel,
Which in Paradise befell.

Once, among the Pleiads walking,

SAYD overheard the young gods talking; And the treason, too long pent, To his ears was evident. The young deities discussed Laws of form, and metre just, Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams, What subsisteth, and what seems. One, with low tones that decide, And doubt and reverend use defied, With a look that solved the sphere, And stirred the devils everywhere, Gave his sentiment divine Against the being of a line. 'Line in nature is not found; Unit and universe are round; In vain produced, all rays return; Evil will bless, and ice will burn.' As Uriel spoke with piercing eye, A shudder ran around the sky;

The stern old war-gods shook their heads;
The seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds;
Seemed to the holy festival

The rash word boded ill to all;
The balance-beam of Fate was bent;
The bounds of good and ill were rent;
Strong Hades could not keep his own,
But all slid to confusion.

A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell
On the beauty of Uriel;

In heaven once eminent, the god
Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud;
Whether doomed to long gyration
In the sea of generation,

Or by knowledge grown too bright
To hit the nerve of feebler sight.
Straightway, a forgetting wind
Stole over the celestial kind,
And their lips the secret kept,
If in ashes the fire-seed slept.

But now and then, truth-speaking things
Shamed the angels' veiling wings;
And, shrilling from the solar course,
Or from fruit of chemic force,
Procession of a soul in matter,
Or the speeding change of water,
Or out of the good of ew born,
Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn,
And a blush tinged the upper sky,

And the gods shook, they knew not why.

TO RHEA.

THEE, dear friend, a brother soothes,
Not with flatteries, but truths,
Which tarnish not, but purify
To light which dims the morning's eye.
I have come from the spring-woods,
From the fragrant solitudes;-
Listen what the poplar-tree

And murmuring waters counselled me.

If with love thy heart has burned;
If thy love is unreturned;
Hide thy grief within thy breast,
Though it tear thee unexpressed;
For when love has once departed
From the eyes of the false-hearted,
And one by one has torn off quite
The bandages of purple light;
Though thou wert the loveliest
Form the soul had ever dressed,
Thou shalt seem, in each reply,
A vixen to his altered eye;

Thy softest pleadings seem too bold,
Thy praying lute will seem to scold;
Though thou kept the straightest road,
Yet thou errest far and broad.
But thou shalt do as do the gods

In their cloudless periods;

For of this lore be thou sure,-
Though thou forget, the gods, secure,
Forget never their command,

But make the statute of this land.
As they lead, so follow all,
Ever have done, ever shall.
Warning to the blind and deaf,
'Tis written on the iron leaf,
Who drinks of Cupid's nectar cup
Loveth downward, and not up;
He who loves, of gods or men,
Shall not by the same be loved again;
His sweetheart's idolatry
Falls, in turn, a new degree.
When a god is once beguiled
By beauty of a mortal child,
And by her radiant youth delighted,
He is not fooled, but warily knoweth
His love shall never be requited.
And thus the wise Immortal doeth.-
'Tis his study and delight

To bless that creature day and night.
From all evils to defend her;
In her lap to pour all splendour;
To ransack earth for riches rare,
And fetch her stars to deck her hair:
He mixes music with her thoughts,
And saddens her with heavenly doubts:
All grace, all good his great heart knows
Profuse in love, the king bestows:
Saying, Hearken! Earth, Sea, Air!
This monument of my despair
Build I to the All-Good, All-Fair.
Not for a private good,

But I, from my beatitude,

Albeit scorned as none was scorned,

Adorn her as was none adorned.

I make this maiden an ensample

To Nature, through her kingdoms ample,

THANKS to the morning light,
Thanks to the foaming sea,
To the uplands of New Hampshire,
To the green-haired forest free;
Thanks to each man of courage,
To the maids of holy mind;

To the boy with his games undaunted
Who never looks behind.

Cities of proud hotels,

Houses of rich and great, Vice nestles in your chambers, Beneath your roofs of slate. It cannot conquer folly, Time-and-space-conquering steam, And the light-outspeeding telegraph Bears nothing on its beam.

The politics are base;

The letters do not cheer;
And 'tis far in the deeps of history,
The voice that speaketh clear.
Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.
Yet there in the parlour sits

Some figure of noble guise.-
Our angel, in a stranger's form,
Or woman's pleading eyes;
Or only a flashing sunbeam
In at the window-pane;
Or Music pours on mortals
Its beautiful disdain.

The inevitable morning

Finds them who in cellars be;
And be sure the all-loving Nature
Will smile in a factory.
Yon ridge of purple landscape,
Yon sky between the walls,
Hold all the hidden wonders,
In scanty intervals.

Alas! the Sprite that haunts us
Deceives our rash desire;
It whispers of the glorious gods,
And leaves us in the mire.
We cannot learn the cipher

That's writ upon our cell;
Stars taunt us by a mystery
Which we could never spell.
If but one hero knew it,

The world would blush in flame; The sage, till he hit the secret, Would hang his head for shame.

But our brothers have not read it,
Not one has found the key;
And henceforth we are comforted,-
We are but such as they.

Still, still the secret presses;

The nearing clouds draw down; The crimson morning flames into The fopperies of the town. Within, without the idle earth, Stars weave eternal rings; The sun himself shines heartily, And shares the joy he brings.

And what if Trade sow cities
Like shells along the shore,
And thatch with towns the prairie broad
With railways ironed o'er?---
They are but sailing foam-bells

Along Thought's causing stream,
And take their shape and sun-colour
From him that sends the dream.

For Destiny never swerves

Or yields to men the helm ;

He shoots his thought, by hidden nerves,
Throughout the solid realm.
The patient Dæmon sits,

With roses and a shroud;
He has his way, and deals his gifts,—
But ours is not allowed.

He is no churl nor trifler,
And his viceroy is none,-
Love-without-weakness,-

Of Genius sire and son.
And his will is not thwarted;

The seeds of land and sea Are the atoms of his body bright, And his behest obey.

He serveth the servant,

The brave he loves amain; He kills the cripple and the sick, And straight begins again; For gods delight in gods,

And thrust the weak aside; To him who scorns their charities, Their arms fly open wide.

When the old world is sterile,
And the ages are effete,

He will from wrecks and sediment
The fairer world complete.

He forbids to despair;

His cheeks mantle with mirth;
And the unimagined good of men
Is yeaning at the birth.

Spring still makes spring in the mind,
When sixty years are told;
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old.
Over the winter glaciers,

I see the summer glow,

And through the wild-piled snowdrift, The warm rosebuds below.

510

ALPHONSO OF CASTILE.

I, ALPHONSO, live and learn,
Seeing Nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind;
Lemons run to leaves and rind;
Meagre crop of figs and limes;
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies.
Imps, at high midsummer, blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot:
"Twill not now avail to tan
Orange cheek or skin of man.
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the people cry.
Yon pale, scrawny fisher fools,
Gaunt as bitterns in the pools,
Are no brothers of my blood;-
They discredit Adamhood.

Eyes of gods! ye must have seen,
O'er your ramparts as ye lean,
The cosmical debility;
Of genius the sterility;
Mighty projects countermanded;
Rash ambition, broken-handed;
Puny man and scentless rose
Tormenting Pan to double the dose.
Rebuild or ruin: either fill

Of vital force the wasted rill,
Or tumble all again in heap
To weltering chaos and to sleep.

Say, Seigniors, are the old Niles dry,
Which fed the veins of earth and sky,
That mortals miss the loyal heats,
Which drove them erst to social feats;
Now, to a savage selfness grown,
Think nature barely serves for one;
With science poorly mask their hurt,
And vex the gods with question pert,
Immensely curious whether you
Still are rulers, or mildew?

Masters, I'm in pain with you;
Masters, I'll be plain with you;
In my palace of Castile,

I, a king, for kings can feel.

There my thoughts the matter roll,
And solve and oft resolve the whole.
And, for I'm styled Alphonse the Wise,
Ye shall not fail for sound advice:
Before ye want a drop of rain,
Hear the sentiment of Spain.

You have tried famine: no more try it;
Ply us now with a full diet;
Teach your pupils now with plenty,
For one sun supply us twenty.

I have thought it thoroughly over,--
State of hermit, state of lover;

We must have society,

We cannot spare variety.
Hear you, then, celestial fellows!

Fits not to be overzealous;

Steads not to work on the clean jump,
Nor wine nor brains perpetual pump.
Men and gods are too extense;
Could you slacken and condense?
Your rank overgrowths reduce
Till kinds abound with juice?

your

Earth, crowded, cries, 'Too many men !'
My counsel is, kill nine in ten,

And bestow the shares of all
On the remnant decimal.
Add their nine lives to this cat;
Stuff their nine brains in one hat;
Make his frame and forces square
With the labours he must dare;
Thatch his flesh, and even his years
With the marble which he rears.
There, growing slowly old at ease,
No faster than his planted trees,
He may, by warrant of his age,
In schemes of broader scope engage.
So shall ye have a man of the sphere,
Fit to grace the solar year.

MITHRIDATES.

I CANNOT spare water or wine,
Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;
From the earth-poles to the line,

All between that works or grows,
Everything is kin of mine.

Give me agates for my meat;
Give me cantharids to eat;
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes;-
From all natures, sharp and slimy,
Salt and basalt, wild and tame :
Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion,

Bird, and reptile, be my game.
Ivy for my fillet band;
Blinding dogwood in my hand;
Hemlock for my sherbet cull me,
And the prussic juice to lull me;
Swing me in the upas boughs,
Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse.
Too long shut in strait and few,
Thinly dieted on dew,

I will use the world, and sift it,
To a thousand humours shift it,
As you spin a cherry.

O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry!
O all you virtues, methods, mights,
Means, appliances, delights,
Reputed wrongs and braggart rights,
Smug routine, and things allowed,
Minorities, things under cloud!
Hither! take me, use me, fill me,
Vein and artery, though ye kill me!

God, who gave to him the lyre,
Of all mortals the desire.
For all breathing men's behoof,
Straightly charged him, 'Sit aloof';
Annexed a warning, poets say,
To the bright premium,-
Ever, when twain together play,
Shall the harp be dumb.

Many may come,
But one shall sing;
Two touch the string,

The harp is dumb,

Though there come a million,
Wise Saadi dwells alone.

Yet Saadi loved the race of men,

No churl, immured in cave or den;
In bower and hall

He wants them all,

Nor can dispense

With Persia for his audience:
They must give ear,

Grow red with joy and white with fear;
But he has no companion;
Come ten, or come a million,
Good Saadi dwells alone.

Be thou ware where Saadi dwells;
Wisdom of the gods is he,-
Entertain it reverently.
Gladly round that golden lamp
Sylvan deities encamp,

And simple maids and noble youth
Are welcome to the man of truth.

Most welcome they who need him most, They feed the spring which they exhaust; For greater need

Draws better deed:

But, critic, spare thy vanity,
Nor show thy pompous parts,
To vex with odious subtlety
The cheerer of men's hearts.

Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly say
Endless dirges to decay,
Never in the blaze of light
Lose the shudder of midnight;
Pale at overflowing noon

Hear wolves barking at the moon;
In the bower of dalliance sweet
Hear the far Avenger's feet;

And shake before those awful Powers,
Who in their pride forgive not ours.
Thus the sad-eyed Fakirs preach:
'Bard, when thee would Allah teach,
And lift thee to his holy mount,
He sends thee from his bitter fount
Wormwood, saying, "Go thy ways,
Drink not the Malaga of praise,
But do the deed thy fellows hate,
And compromise thy peaceful state;
Smite the white breasts which thee fed,
Stuff sharp thorns beneath the head
Of them thou shouldst have comforted;
For out of woe and out of crime
Draws the heart a lore sublime." """
And yet it seemeth not to me
That the high gods love tragedy;
For Saadi sat in the sun,
And thanks was his contrition;
For haircloth and for bloody whips,
Had active hands and smiling lips;

And yet his runes he rightly read,
And to his folk his message sped.
Sunshine in his heart transferred
Lighted each transparent word,

And well could honouring Persia learn
What Saadi wished to say;

For Saadi's nightly stars did burn
Brighter than Dschami's day.

Whispered the Muse in Saadi's cot:
'O gentle Saadi, listen not,
Tempted by thy praise of wit,
Or by thirst and appetite
For the talents not thine own,
To sons of contradiction.
Never, son of eastern morning,
Follow falsehood, follow scorning.
Denounce who will, who will deny,
And pile the hills to scale the sky:
Let theist, atheist, pantheist,
Define and wrangle how they list,
Fierce conserver, fierce destroyer,-
But thou, joy-giver and enjoyer,
Unknowing war, unknowing crime,
Gentle Saadi, mind thy rhyme;
Heed not what the brawlers say,
Heed thou only Saadi's lay.
'Let the great world bustle on

With war and trade, with camp and town;
A thousand men shall dig and eat;
At forge and furnace thousands sweat;
And thousands sail the purple sea,
And give or take the stroke of war,
Or crowd the market and bazaar;
Oft shall war end, and peace return,
And cities rise where cities burn,
Ere one man my hill shall climb,
Who can turn the golden rhyme.
Let them manage how they may,
Heed thou only Saadi's lay.
Seek the living among the dead,-
Man in man is imprisoned;
Barefooted Dervish is not poor,
If fate unlock his bosom's door,
So that what his eye hath seen
His tongue can paint as bright, as keen;
And what his tender heart hath felt
With equal fire thy heart shall melt.
For, whom the Muses smile upon,

And touch with soft persuasion,

His words like a storm-wind can bring
Terror and beauty on their wing;
In his every syllable

Lurketh nature veritable;

And though he speak in midnight dark,In heaven no star, on earth no spark,Yet before the listener's eye

Swims the world in ecstasy,

The forest waves, the morning breaks,
The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes,
Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be,
And life pulsates in rock or tree.
Saadi, so far thy words shall reach :
Suns rise and set in Saadi's speech!'

And thus to Saadi said the Muse:
'Eat thou the bread which men refuse;
Flee from the goods which from thee flee;
Seek nothing,-Fortune seeketh thee.

Nor mount, nor dive; all good things keep
The midway of the eternal deep.
Wish not to fill the isles with eyes
To fetch thee birds of paradise: