Only when our souls are fed We, like parted drops of rain, I IN THEE, AND THOU IN ME. I AM but clay in thy hands, but Thou art the all-loving artist. Passive I lie in thy sight, yet in my selfhood I strive So to embody the life and the love thou ever impartest, That in my sphere of the finite, I may be truly alive. Knowing thou needest this form, as I thy divine inspiration, Knowing thou shapest the clay with a vision and purpose divine, So would I answer each touch of thy hand in its loving creation, Thine, thine only, this warm, dear life, O loving Creator! Thine the invisible future, born of the present, must be. SOFT, BROWN, SMILING EYES. SOFT, brown, smiling eyes, Looking back through years, In the scented air of June,— Silky rippling curls, Tresses long ago Of the peerless day That in my conscious life thy pow-Voice whose tender tones er and beauty may shine, Reflecting the noble intent thou hast in forming thy creatures; Waking from sense into life of the soul, and the image of thee; Working with thee in thy work to model humanity's features Into the likeness of God, myself from myself I would free. One with all human existence, no one above or below me; Lit by thy wisdom and love, as roses are steeped in the morn; Growing from clay to a statue, from statue to flesh, till thou know me Wrought into manhood celestial, and in thine image re-born. So in thy love will I trust, bringing me sooner or later Past the dark screen that divides these shows of the finite from thee. Break in sudden mirth, Heard far back in boyhood's spring, Silent now on earth; Why so sweet and clear, While the bird and bee Fill the balmy summer air, Come your tones to me? I live and feel and think and know? borne By fate, an exile, driven forlorn Tell me the meaning of the breath That whispers from the house of death. That chills thought's metaphysic strife, That dims the dream of After-life. Why, when the scarlet sunset floods Illume the snow and veil the stars With streaming bands and wavering bars, Or music's sensuous, soul-like wine Tell me why instincts meant for good And finite still mean suffering? Look on the millions born to blight; The souls that pine for warmth and light: The crushed and stifled swarms that pack The foul streets and the alleys black, The miserable lives that crawl Outside the grim partition wall 'Twixt rich and poor, 'twixt foul and fair, 'Twixt vaulting hope and lame despair. On that wall's sunny side, within, Hang ripening fruits and tendrils green, O'er garden-beds of bloom and spice, Make pictures in Arcadian nooks. Through blinding dust, o'er bleak highway, The slant sun's melancholy ray Sees stagnant pool and poisonous weed, The hearts that faint, the feet that bleed, The grovelling aim, the flagging faith, The starving curse, the drowning death! O wise philosopher! you soothe smooth. Too plausibly your reasonings come. Until a wall shuts out my day,- Could I dive under pain and death, Or mount and breathe the whole heaven's breath, |