Clear and safe in new light and new life,
To be run, and continued, and ended

dure!

-a new harmony yet - who knows?

or en

The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make

sure;

By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,

And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this.

XVIII.

"I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 't is I who receive: In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe. All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to my

prayer

As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air. From thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread

Sabaoth:

I will ?— the mere atoms despise me!
To look that, even that in the face too?
Think but lightly of such impuissance?
spair?

Why am I not loth
Why is it I dare
What stops my de

This ; 't is not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!

See the King-I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through.

Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would knowing which, I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now! Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou

wilt thou!

80

So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown
And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath,
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death!
As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved!

He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak.

'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek

In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this

hand

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!"

XIX.

I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news

Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews;

And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,

For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed

All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;
In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills;
In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-
thrills;

In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still

Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill

That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with

awe:

E'en the serpent that slid away silent, he felt the new law. The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;

The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine

bowers :

And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low, With their obstinate, all but hushed voices - "E'en so, it is

so!"

They would fain see, too,

My star that dartles the red and the blue!

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled : They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it What matter to me if their star is a world?

Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

BY THE FIRESIDE.

I.

How well I know what I mean to do

When the long dark autumn evenings come;
And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?
With the music of all thy voices, dumb
In life's November too!

II.

I shall be found by the fire, suppose,

O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose!

III.

Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip, "There he is at it, deep in Greek:

Now then, or never, out we slip

To cut from the hazels by the creek A mainmast for our ship!"

IV.

I shall be at it indeed, my friends!
Greek puts already on either side
Such a branch-work forth as soon extends
To a vista opening far and wide,
And I pass out where it ends.

VI.

I follow wherever I am led,

Knowing so well the leader's hand: Oh woman-country, wooed not wed, Loved all the more by earth's male-lands, Laid to their hearts instead!

VII.

Look at the ruined chapel again
Half-way up in the Alpine gorge!
Is that a tower, I point you plain,
Or is it a mill, or an iron forge
Breaks solitude in vain?

VIII.

A turn, and we stand in the heart of things; The woods are round us, heaped and dim; From slab to slab how it slips and springs, The thread of water single and slim, Through the ravage some torrent brings!

IX.

Does it feed the little lake below?

That speck of white just on its marge Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow,

How sharp the silver spear-heads charge When Alp meets heaven in snow!

X.

On our other side is the straight-up rock; And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it By boulder-stones where lichens mock

The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit Their teeth to the polished block.

XI.

Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers,
And thorny balls, each three in one,
The chestnuts throw on our path in showers!
For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun,
These early November hours,

XII.

That crimson the creeper's leaf across

Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,

O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss,
And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped
Elf-needled mat of moss,

XIII.

By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged
Last evening- nay, in to-day's first dew
Yon sudden coral nipple bulged,

Where a freaked fawn-colored flaky crew
Of toad-stools peep indulged.

XIV.

And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge
That takes the turn to a range beyond,
Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge
Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond
Danced over by the midge.

XV.

The chapel and bridge are of stone alike,
Blackish-gray and mostly wet;

Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dyke.
See here again, how the lichens fret
And the roots of the ivy strike!

XVI.

Poor little place, where its one priest comes
On a festa-day, if he comes at all,

To the dozen folk from their scattered homes,
Gathered within that precinct small
By the dozen ways one roams

XVII.

To drop from the charcoal-burners' huts,

Or climb from the hemp-dressers' low shed, Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts, Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spread Their gear on the rock's bare juts.

XVIII.

It has some pretension too, this front,
With its bit of fresco half-moon-wise
Set over the porch, Art's early wont :
'Tis John in the Desert, I surmise,
But has borne the weather's brunt —