Night passed, day shone,

And Theocrite was gone.

With God a day endures alway,
A thousand years are but a day.

66

God said in Heaven, " Nor day nor night "Now brings the voice of my delight."

Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth,
Spread his wings and sank to earth;

Entered in flesh, the empty cell,
Lived there, and played the craftsman well:

And morning, evening, noon, and night,
Praised God in place of Theocrite.

And from a boy, to youth he grew :

The man put off the stripling's hue :

The man matured and fell away
Into the season of decay :

And ever o'er the trade he bent,
And ever lived on earth content.

(He did God's will; to him, all one If on the earth or in the sun.)

God said, "A praise is in mine ear; "There is no doubt in it, no fear :

"So sing old worlds, and so

"New worlds that from my footstool go.

“Clearer loves sound other ways: "I miss my little human praise."

Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell The flesh disguise, remained the cell.

'Twas Easter Day: he flew to Rome, And paused above Saint Peter's dome.

In the tiring-room close by
The great outer gallery,

With his holy vestments dight,
Stood the new Pope, Theocrite :

And all his past career

Came back upon him clear,

Since when, a boy, he plied his trade,
Till on his life the sickness weighed ;

And in his cell, when death drew near,
An angel in a dream brought cheer:

And rising from the sickness drear
He grew a priest, and now stood here.

To the East with praise he turned,
And on his sight the angel burned.

"I bore thee from thy craftman's cell, "And set thee here; I did not well.

"Vainly I left my angel's-sphere,

“Vain was thy dream of many a year.

"Thy voice's praise seemed weak; it dropped"Creation's chorus stopped!

"Go back and praise again

"The early way-while I remain.

"With that weak voice of our disdain,
"Take up Creation's pausing strain.

"Back to the cell and poor employ:
"Become the craftsman and the boy!"

Theocrite grew old at home;

A new Pope dwelt in Peter's Dome.

One vanished as the other died:
They sought God side by side.

MEETING AT NIGHT.

I.

THE grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

II.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

PARTING AT MORNING.

ROUND the cape of a sudden came the sea, And the sun looked over the mountain's rim— And straight was a path of gold for him,

And the need of a world of men for me.

SAUL.

SAID Abner," At last thou art come!

"Ere I tell, ere thou speak,

"Kiss my cheek, wish me well!" Then I wished it,

And did kiss his cheek:

And he, "Since the King, oh my friend,

For thy countenance sent,

Nor drunken nor eaten have we;

Nor, until from his tent

Thou return with the joyful assurance

The king liveth yet,

Shall our lip with the honey be brightened,

-The water, be wet.

"For out of the black mid-tent's silence,

A space of three days,

No sound hath escaped to thy servants,

Of prayer nor of praise,

To betoken that Saul and the Spirit

Have ended their strife,

And that faint in his triumph the monarch

Sinks back upon life.

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved!

God's child, with his dew

On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies
Still living and blue