'In prayers, that upward mount Like to a fair-sunned fount Which, in gushing back upon you, Hath an upper music won you,— 'In faith, that still perceives No rose can shed her leaves, Far less, poet fall from mission, With an unfulfilled fruition, In hope, that apprehends 'In thanks, for all the good By poets understood, For the sound of seraphs moving Down the hidden depths of loving, For sights of things away Through fissures of the clay, Promised things which shall be given And sung over, up in Heaven,— 'For life, so lovely-vain, For death, which breaks the chain, For this sense of present sweetness, And this yearning to completeness!' THE POET AND THE BIRD. A FABLE. I. SAID a people to a poet-Go out from among us straightway! While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine : There's a little fair brown nightingale who, sitting in the gateway, Makes fitter music to our ear than any song of thine!' II. The poet went out weeping; the nightingale ceased chanting: 'Now, wherefore, O thou nightingale, is all thy sweetness done ?' -'I cannot sing my earthly things, the heavenly poet wanting, Whose highest harmony includes the lowest under sun.' VOL.III. III. The poet went out weeping, and died abroad, bereft there; The bird flew to his grave and died amid a thousand wails: And when I last came by the place, I swear the music left there Was only of the poet's song, and not the nightin gale's. THE CRY OF THE HUMAN. I. 'THERE is no God,' the foolish saith, But none, 'There is no sorrow,' And nature oft the cry of faith, In bitter need will borrow: Eyes, which the preacher could not school, By wayside graves are raisëd, And lips say, God be pitiful,' Who ne'er said, ' God be praised.' II. Be pitiful, O God! The tempest stretches from the steep The shadow of its coming, The beasts grow tame and near us creep, As help were in the human; Yet, while the cloud-wheels roll and grind, We spirits tremble under— The hills have echoes, but we find No answer for the thunder. Be pitiful, O God! III. The battle hurtles on the plains, Then kill, curse on, by that same sign, Clay-clay, and spirit-spirit. Be pitiful, O God! IV. The plague runs festering through the town, And never a bell is tolling, And corpses, jostled 'neath the moon, Nod to the dead-cart's rolling : The young child calleth for the cup, The strong man brings it weeping, The mother from her babe looks up, And shrieks away its sleeping. Be pitiful, O God! V. The plague of gold strikes far and near, And deep and strong it enters; This purple chimar which we wear, Makes madder than the centaur's: Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange, |