Beat like a heart among the leaves.
O heart that never beats nor heaves,

In that one darkness lying still,

What now to thee my love's great will Or the fine web the sunshine weaves ?

For now doth daylight disavow

Those days,-nought left to see or hear. Only in solemn whispers now

At night-time these things reach mine eai, When the leaf-shadows at a breath Shrink in the road, and all the heath,

Forest and water, far and wide,

In limpid starlight glorified, Lie like the mystery of death.

Last night at last I could have slept,

And yet delayed my sleep till dawn, Still wandering. Then it was I wept :

For unawares I came upon Those glades where once she walked with me : And as I stood there suddenly,

All wan with traversing the night,

Upon the desolate verge of light Yearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.

Even so, where Heaven holds breath and hears

The beating heart of Love's own breast, ---
Where round the secret of all spheres

All angels lay their wings to rest,-
How shall my soul stand rapt and awed,
When, by the new birth borne abroad

Throughout the music of the suns,

It enters in her soul at once
And knows the silence there for God!

Here with her face doth memory sit

Meanwhile, and wait the day's decline, Till other eyes shall look from it,

Eyes of the spirit's Palestine.

Even than the old gaze tenderer:
While hopes and aims long lost with her

Stand round her image side by side,

Like tombs of pilgrims that have died
About the Holy Sepulchre.

SIBYLLA PALMIFERA.

(For a Picture.) Under the arch of Lise, where love and death,

Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw

Beauty enthroned ; and though her gaze struck awe, I drew it in as simply as my breath. Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,

The sky and sea bend on thee,- which can draw,

By sea or sky or woman, to one law,
The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.

This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise

Thy voice and hand shake still,-long known to thee
By flying hair and fluttering hem,—the beat
Following her daily of thy heart and feet,

How passionately and irretrievably,
In what fond flight, how many ways and days!

NEWBORN DEATH.

I.

To-day Death seems to me an infant child

Which her worn mother Life upon my knee

Has set to grow my friend and play with me;
If haply so my heart might be beguild
To find no terrors in a face so mild,-

If haply so my weary heart might be

Unto the newborn milky eyes of thee, O Death, before resentment reconcild.

How long, O Death ? And shall thy feet depart

Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart,

What time with thee indeed I reach the strand Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art,

And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?

II.
And tholi, O Life, the lady of all bliss,

With whom, when our first heart beat full and fast,

I wandered till the haunts of men were pass’d,
And in fair places found all bowers amiss
Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss,

While to the winds all thought of Death we cast :

Ah, Life! and must I have from thee at last No smile to greet me and no babe but this?

Lo! Love, the child once ours; and Song, whose hair

Blew like a flame and blossomed like a wreath ; And Art, whose eyes were worlds by God found fair ;

These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath With neck-twined arms, as oft we watched them there :

And did these die that thou might'st bear me Death?

SooTHSAY.

Let no man ask thee of anything
Not yearborn between Spring and Spring.
More of all worlds than he can know,
Each day the single sun doth show.
A trustier gloss than thou canst give
From all wise scrolls demonstrative,
The sea doth sigh and the wind sing.
Let no man awe thee on any height
Of earthly kingship's mouldering might.
The dust his heel holds meet for thy brow
Hath all of it been what both are now;
And thou and he may plague together
A beggar's eyes in some dusty weather
When none that is now knows sound or sight.

Crave thou no dower of earthly things
Unworthy Hope's imaginings.
To have brought true birth of Song to be
And to have won hearts to Poesy,
Or anywhere in the sun or rain
To have loved and been beloved again,
Is lostiest reach of Hope's bright wings.

The wild waifs cast up by the sea
Are diverse ever seasonably.
Even so the soul-tides still may land
A different drift upon the sand.
But one the sea is evermore :
And one be still, 'twixt shore and shore,
As the sea's lile, thy soul in thee.

Say, hast thou pride? How then may fit
Thy mood with flatterer's silk-spun wit?
Haply the sweet voice lifts thy crest,
A breeze of fame made manifest.
Nay, but then chaf'st at flattery ? Pause :
Be sure thy wrath is not because
It makes thee feel thou lovest it.

Let thy soul strive that still the same
Be early friendship’s sacred flame.
The affinities have strongest part
In youth, and draw men heart to heart :
As life wears on and finds no rest,
The individual in each breast
Is tyrannous to sunder them.

In the life-drama's stern cue-call,
A friend's a part well-prized by all :
And if thou meet an enemy,
What art thou that none such should be?
Even so: but if the two parts run
Into each other and grow one,
Then comes the curtain's cue to fall.

Whate'er by other's need is claimed
More than by thine,-to him unblamed
Resign it : and if he should hold
What more than he thou lack'st, bread, gold
Or any good whereby we live,-
To thee such substance let him give
Freely: nor he nor thou be shamed.

Strive that thy works prove equal : lest
That work which thou hast done the best
Should come to be to thee at length
(Even as to envy seems the strength
Of others) hateful and abhorr’d, -
Thine own above thyself made lord, -
Of self-rebuke the bitterest.

Unto the man of yearning thought
And aspiration, to do nought
Is in itself almost an act,-
Being chasm-fire and cataract
Of the soul's utter depths unseald.
Yet woe to thee if once thou yield
Unto the act of doing nought!

How callous seems beyond revoke
The clock with its last listless stroke!
How much too late at length !-to trace
The hour on its forewarning face,
The thing thou hast not dared to do!...,
Behold, this may be thus! Ere true
It prove, arise and bear thy yoke.

Let lore of all Theology
Be to thy soul what it can be :
But know,—the Power that fashions man
Measured not out thy little span
For thee to take the meting-rod
In turn, and so approve on God
Thy science of Theometry.