write;

And, ever since, it grew more clean and white,..

Slow to world-greetings. . . quick with its 'Oh, list,'

When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst

I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,

sooth.

I have heard love talked in my early youth, And since, not so long back but that the flowers

Then gathered, smell still. Mussulmans and Giaours

Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and have no ruth

in height

tooth

Slips on the nut, if, after frequent showers, The shell is over-smooth,-and not so

much

Will turn the thing called love, aside to hate,

And write me new my future's epigraph, New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

ways.

XLIII

And think it soon when others cry 'Too late.'

XLI

I THANK all who have loved me in their hearts,

With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all

Who paused a little near the prison-wall, To hear my music in its louder parts, Ere they went onward, each one to the

mart's

Or temple's occupation, beyond call.
But thou, who, in my voice's sink and fall,
When the sob took it, thy divinest Art's
Own instrument didst drop down at thy
foot,

To hearken what I said between my tears,

Instruct me how to thank thee!—Oh, to shoot

My soul's full meaning into future years, That they should lend it utterance, and salute

Love that endures, from Life that disappears!

XLII

'My future will not copy fair my past' I wrote that once; and thinking at my side My ministering life-angel justified The word by his appealing look upcast To the white throne of God, I turned at last,

And there, instead, saw thee, not unallied

To angels in thy soul! Then I, long tried By natural ills, received the comfort fast, While budding, at thy sight, my pilgrim's staff

Gave out green leaves with morning dews impearled.

I seek no copy now of life's first half : Leave here the pages with long musing curled,

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from
Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!-and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Plucked in the garden, all the summer through

And winter, and it seemed as if they grew In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.

So, in the like name of that love of ours, Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too,

And which on warm and cold days I withdrew

From my heart's ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers

Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue, And wait thy weeding; yet here's eglantine,

Here's ivy!-take them, as I used to do Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.

Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,

And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION

BEREAVEMENT

sound

I strive and struggle to deliver right That music of my nature, day and night With dream and thought and feeling interwound,

And inly answering all the senses round With octaves of a mystic depth and height

Which step out grandly to the infinite From the dark edges of the sensual

ground!

This song of soul I struggle to outbear Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,

And utter all myself into the air.
But if I did it,- -as the thunder-roll
Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would
perish there,

Before that dread apocalypse of soul.

THE SERAPH AND POET

THE seraph sings before the manifest God-One, and in the burning of the Seven,

And with the full life of consummate Heaven

Heaving beneath him, like a mother's breast

Warm with her first-born's slumber in that nest.

The poet sings upon the earth graveriven,

Before the naughty world, soon selfforgiven

For wronging him,—and in the darkness prest

From his own soul by worldly weights. Even so,

Sing, seraph with the glory! heaven is high.

Sing, poet with the sorrow! earth is low. The universe's inward voices cry

'Amen' to either song of joy and woe. Sing, seraph,-poet,-sing on equally!

eyelids lay

The sweet lights of my childhood, one by one

Did leave me dark before the natural sun, And I astonied fell and could not pray,

A thought within me to myself did say, 'Is God less God, that thou art left undone?

Rise, worship, bless Him, in this sackcloth spun,

As in that purple!'-But I answered, Nay!

What child his filial heart in words can loose,

If he behold his tender father raise The hand that chastens sorely? can he choose

But sob in silence with an upward gaze?

And my great Father, thinking fit to bruise,

Discerns in speechless tears both prayer and praise.

CONSOLATION

ALL are not taken; there are left behind
Living Belovèds, tender looks to bring,
And make the daylight still a happy thing,
And tender voices, to make soft the wind.
But if it were not so-if I could find
No love in all the world for comforting,
Nor any path but hollowly did ring,
Where dust to dust' the love from life
disjoined,

And if, before those sepulchres unmoving,
I stood alone (as some forsaken lamb
Goes bleating up the moors in weary
dearth),

Crying 'Where are ye, O my loved and loving?'

I know a Voice would sound, 'Daughter, I AM.

Can I suffice for HEAVEN, and not for earth?'

Benignant friend, I will not proudly say As better poets use, 'These flowers I lay,' Because I would not wrong thy roses sweet,

Blaspheming so their name. And yet, repeat,

Thou, overleaning them this springtime day,

With heart as open to love as theirs to May,

-'Low-rooted verse may reach some heavenly heat,

Even like my blossoms, if as nature-true, Though not as precious.' Thou art unperplext,

Dear friend, in whose dear writings drops the dew

And blow the natural airs,—thou, who

art next

To nature's self in cheering the world's view,

To preach a sermon on so known a text!

ON A PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH BY B. R. HAYDON WORDSWORTH upon Helvellyn! Let the cloud

Ebb audibly along the mountain-wind, Then break against the rock, and show behind

The lowland valleys floating up to crowd The sense with beauty. He with forehead bowed

And humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined Before the sovran thought of his own mind

And very meek with inspirations proud, Takes here his rightful place as poetpriest

By the high altar, singing prayer and prayer

To the higher Heavens. A noble vision

PAST AND FUTURE

My future will not copy fair my past On any leaf but Heaven's. Be fully done,

Supernal Will! I would not fain be one Who, satisfying thirst and breaking fast Upon the fullness of the heart, at last Says no grace after meat. My wine has

run

Indeed out of my cup, and there is none To gather up the bread of my repast Scattered and trampled,-yet I find some good

In earth's green herbs, and streams that bubble up

Clear from the darkling ground,- -content until

I sit with angels before better food. Dear Christ! when Thy new vintage fills

my cup,

This hand shall shake no more, nor that wine spill.

IRREPARABLENESS

I HAVE been in the meadows all the day And gathered there the nosegay that you see,

Singing within myself as a bird or bee When such do field-work on a morn of May.

But now I look upon my flowers, decay Has met them in my hands more fatally Because more warmly clasped,—and sobs are free

To come instead of songs. What do

you say,

Sweet counsellors, dear friends? that I should go

Back straightway to the fields, and gather more?

Another, sooth, may do it,-but not I ! My heart is very tired, my strength is low,

My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,

Held dead within them till myself shall die,

3

TEARS

THANK God, bless God, all ye who

suffer not

More grief than ye can weep for. That is well

That is light grieving! lighter, none befell

Since Adam forfeited the primal lot. Tears! what are tears? The babe weeps

in its cot,

The mother singing,—at her marriagebell

The bride weeps, -and before the oracle Of high-faned hills, the poct has forgot Such moisture on his cheeks. Thank God for grace,

Ye who weep only! If, as some have done,

Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place And touch but tombs,-look up those tears will run

Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,

And leave the vision clear for stars and

sun.

GRIEF

I TELL you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air

Beat upward to God's throne in loud

access

Of shrieking and reproach. Full desert

ness

In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted

man, express

Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death :

Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it the marble eyelids are not
wet;

If it could weep, it could arise and go.

SUBSTITUTION

WHEN Some beloved voice that was to you Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,

And silence, against which you dare not cry,

Aches round you like a strong disease and new

What hope? what help? what music will undo

That silence to your sense? Not friend-
ship's sigh,
Not reason's subtle count.
Not melody
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew.
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales,
Whose hearts leap upward through the
cypress trees

To the clear moon! nor yet the spheric laws

Self-chanted,-nor the angels' sweet All hails,

Met in the smile of God. Nay, none of these.

Speak THOU, availing Christ!—and fill this pause.

COMFORT

SPEAK low to me, my Saviour, low and

sweet

From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low, Lest I should fear and fall, and miss

Thee so

Who art not missed by any that entreat. Speak to me as to Mary at Thy feet! And if no precious gums my hands bestow,

Let my tears drop like amber, while I go

In reach of Thy divinest voice complete In humanest affection-thus, in sooth, To lose the sense of losing. As a child, Whose song-bird seeks the wood for

evermore,

Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth,

Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,

He sleeps the faster that he wept before.