Ill strives the will, 'gainst will more wise that strives
His pleasure therefore to mine own preferr'd,
I drew the sponge yet thirsty from the wave.

Onward I mov'd: he also onward mov'd,
Who led me, coasting still, wherever place
Along the rock was vacant, as a man
Walks near the battlements on narrow wall.
For those on th' other part, who drop by drop
Wring out their all-infecting malady,
Too closely press the verge. Accurst be thou!
Inveterate wolf! whose gorge ingluts more prey,
Than every beast beside, yet is not fill'd!
So bottomless thy maw!--Ye spheres of heaven!
To whom there are, as seems, who attribute
All change in mortal state, when is the day
Of his appearing, for whom fate reserves
To chase her hence?--With wary steps and slow
We pass'...

Oh! think not my spirits are always as light,
    And as free from a pang as they seem to you now;
Nor expect that the heart-beaming smile of to-night
    Will return with to morrow to brighten my brow.
No!--life is a waste of wearisome hours,
    Which seldom the rose of enjoyment adorns;
And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers,
    Is always the first to be touched by the thorns.
But send round the bowl, and be happy awhile--
    May we never meet worse, in our pilgrimage here,
Than the tear that enjoyment may gild with a smile,
    And the smile that compassion can turn to a tear.

The thread of our life would be dark, Heaven knows!
    If it were not with friendship and love intertwined:
And I care not how soon I may sink to repose,
    When the...

O strange, dim other-world revealed to us,
Beginning there where ends reality,
Lying 'twixt life and death, and populous


With souls from either sphere! now enter we
Thy twisted paths.    Barred is the silver gate,
But the wild-carven doors of ivory


Spring noiselessly apart: between them straight
Flies forth a cloud of nameless shadowy things,
With harpies, imps, and monsters, small and great,


Blurring the thick air with darkening wings.
All humors of the blood and brain take shape,
And fright us with our own imaginings.


A trouble weighs upon us: no escape
From this unnatural region can there be.
Fixed eyes stare on us, wide mouths grin and gape,


Familiar faces out of reach we see.
Fain would we scream...

Where lies the truth? has Man, in wisdom's creed,
A pitiable doom; for respite brief
A care more anxious, or a heavier grief?
Is he ungrateful, and doth little heed
God's bounty, soon forgotten; or indeed,
Must Man, with labour born, awake to sorrow
When Flowers rejoice and Larks with rival speed
Spring from their nests to bid the Sun good morrow?
They mount for rapture as their songs proclaim
Warbled in hearing both of earth and sky;
But o'er the contrast wherefore heave a sigh?
Like those aspirants let us soar our aim,
Through life's worst trials, whether shocks or snares,
A happier, brighter, purer Heaven than theirs.

Here, in the heart of the world,
    Here, in the noise and the din,
Here, where our spirits were hurled
    To battle with sorrow and sin,
This is the place and the spot
    For knowledge of infinite things;
This is the kingdom where Thought
    Can conquer the prowess of kings.

Wait for no heavenly life,
    Seek for no temple alone;
Here, in the midst of the strife,
    Know what the sages have known.
See what the Perfect Ones saw -
    God in the depth of each soul,
God as the light and the law,
    God as beginning and goal.

Earth is one chamber of Heaven,
    Death is no grander than birth.
Joy in the life that was given,
    Strive for perfection on earth.
Here, in the turmoil and roar,
    Show what it is to be calm...

Mak th' best on't, - mak th' best on't, - tho' th' job be a bad en,
God bless mi life! childer, its useless to freeat!
This world's reight enuff, but it wod be a sad en,
If we all started rooarin for what we cant get.

Who knows but what th' things we mooast wish for an covet,
Are th' varry warst things we could ivver possess;
Let's shak hands wi' awr luck, an try soa to love it,
'At noa joy ov awr life shall be made onny less.

Mak th' best on't, - mak th' best on't, - ne'er heed if yor naybor
Can live withaat workin wol yo have to slave;
Ther's nowt sweetens life like some honest hard labor,
An it's th' battles yo feight 'at proves yo are brave.

Ne'er heed if grim poverty pays yo a visit,
'Twill nivver stop long if yo show a bold front;
It's noa sin to...

'Midst the noise of merriment and glee,

'Midst full many a sorrow, many a care,
Charlotte, I remember, we remember thee,

How, at evening's hour so fair,
Thou a kindly hand didst reach us,

When thou, in some happy place

Where more fair is Nature s face,

Many a lightly-hidden trace
Of a spirit loved didst teach us.

Well 'tis that thy worth I rightly knew,

That I, in the hour when first we met,

While the first impression fill'd me yet,
Call'd thee then a girl both good and true.

Rear'd in silence, calmly, knowing nought,

On the world we suddenly are thrown;
Hundred thousand billows round us sport;

All things charm us many please alone,
Many grieve us, and as hour on hour is stealing,

Who does not run after Fortune?

I would I were in some spot whence I could watch the eager crowds rushing from kingdom to kingdom in their vain chase after the daughter of Chance!

They are indeed but faithful followers of a phantom; for when they think they have her, lo! she is gone! Poor wretches! One must pity rather than blame their foolishness. "That man," they say with sanguine voice, "raised cabbages; and now he is Pope! Are we not as good as he?" Ah! yes! a hundred times as good perhaps; but what of that? Fortune has no eyes for all your merit. Besides, is Papacy, after all, worth peace, which one must leave behind for it? Peace - a treasure that once was the possession of gods alone - is seldom granted to the votaries of Dame Fortune. Do not seek her; and then she will seek you. That is the way with women!

    When Nature her great master-piece designed,
    And fram'd her last, best work, the human mind,
    Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,
    She form'd of various parts the various man.

    Then first she calls the useful many forth;
    Plain plodding industry, and sober worth:
    Thence peasants, farmers, native sons of earth,
    And merchandise' whole genus take their birth:
    Each prudent cit a warm existence finds,
    And all mechanics' many-apron'd kinds.
    Some other rarer sorts are wanted yet,
    The lead and buoy are needful to the net;
    The caput mortuum of gross desires
    Makes a material for mere knights and squires;
    The martial phosphorus is taught to flow,
    She kneads the lumpish philosophic dough,
    Then m...

What it would mean for you and me
If dawn should come no more!
Think of its gold along the sea,
Its rose above the shore!
That rose of awful mystery,
Our souls bow down before.

What wonder that the Inca kneeled,
The Aztec prayed and pled
And sacrificed to it, and sealed,
With rights that long are dead,
The marvels that it once revealed
To them it comforted.

What wonder, yea! what awe, behold!
What rapture and what tears
Were ours, if wild its rivered gold,
That now each day appears,
Burst on the world, in darkness rolled,
Once every thousand years!

Think what it means to me and you
To see it even as God
Evolved it when the world was new!
When Light rose, earthquake-shod,
And slow its gradual splendor grew
O'...

I am the tender voice calling 'Away,'
Whispering between the beatings of the heart,
And inaccessible in dewy eyes
I dwell, and all unkissed on lovely lips,
Lingering between white breasts inviolate,
And fleeting ever from the passionate touch,
I shine afar, till men may not divine
Whether it is the stars or the beloved
They follow with wrapt spirit. And I weave
My spells at evening, folding with dim caress,
Aerial arms and twilight dropping hair,
The lonely wanderer by wood or shore,
Till, filled with some deep tenderness, he yields,
Feeling in dreams for the dear mother heart
He knew, ere he forsook the starry way,
And clings there, pillowed far above the smoke
And the dim murmur from the duns of men.
I can enchant the trees and rocks, and fill
The ...

    In the morn of the world, at the daybreak of time,
        When Kingdoms were few and Empires unknown,
    God searched for a Ruler to sceptre the land,
        And gather the harvest from the seed He had sown.
    He found a young Shepherd boy watching his flock
        Where the mountains looked down on deep meadows of green;
    He hailed the young Shepherd boy king of the land
        And anointed his brow with a Chrism unseen.

    He placed in his frail hands the sceptre of power,
    And taught his young heart all the wisdom of love;
    He gave him the vision of prophet and priest,
    And dowered him with counsel and light from above.
    But alas! came a day when the Shepherd forgot
    And heaped on his realm all the woes that war brings,
    And bar...

He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour.
Distant, across the thundering organ-swell,
In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower,
Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell.
Over the crowd his eye uneasy roves.
He sees a plume, a fur; his heart dilates -
Soars . . . and then sinks again. It is not hers he loves.
She will not come, the woman that he waits.

Braided with streams of silver incense rise
The antique prayers and ponderous antiphones.
'Gloria Patri' echoes to the skies;
'Nunc et in saecula' the choir intones.
He marks not the monotonous refrain,
The priest that serves nor him that celebrates,
But ever scans the aisle for his blonde head. . . . In vain!
She will not come, the woman that he waits.

How like a flower seemed the perfu...

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic - as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! -
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

The Saviour looked on Peter. Ay, no word,
No gesture of reproach; the Heavens serene
Though heavy with armed justice, did not lean
Their thunders that way: the forsaken Lord
Looked only, on the traitor. None record
What that look was, none guess; for those who have seen
Wronged lovers loving through a death-pang keen,
Or pale-cheeked martyrs smiling to a sword,
Have missed Jehovah at the judgment-call.
And Peter, from the height of blasphemy
'I never knew this man' did quail and fall
As knowing straight that God; and turned free
And went out speechless from the face of all
And filled the silence, weeping bitterly.

When days grow long, and brain and hands grow weary,
    And hot the city street,
Forth to the haunts, by cooling winds made cheery
    We fly with willing feet.

We leave our cares and labours all behind us,
    The city's noise and din,
And, hid securely where they cannot find us,
    We drink the sunshine in.

But when the days grow long with bitter sorrow,
    And hearts grow sick with woe,
Where are the haunts that we may seek to-morrow?
    Where can we hide or go?

Holds earth no nook, where hearts with sorrow breaking,
    May find a summer's rest?
A season's respite from the weary aching
    That gnaws within the breast?

O God! if we could fly and leave behind us
    Our crosses and our grief,
Could hide a season where t...

Hush! speak in accents soft and low,
    And treat with careful stealth
Thro' that rich curtained room which tells
    Of luxury and wealth;
Men of high science and of skill
    Stand there with saddened brow,
Exchanging some low whispered words -
    What can their art do now?

Follow their gaze to yonder couch
    Where moans in fitful pain
The mistress of this splendid home,
    With aching heart and brain.
The fever burning in her veins
    Tinges with carmine bright
That sunken cheek - alas! she needs
    No borrowed bloom to-night.

The masses of her raven hair
    Fall down on either side
In tangled richness - it has been
    Through life her care and pride;
And those small perfect hands on which
    Her gaze complacen...

Before them lay the heaving deep
    Behind, the foemen pressed;
And every face grew dark with fear,
    And anguish filled each breast
Save one, the Leader's, he, serene,
    Beheld, with dauntless mind,
The restless floods before them seen.
    The foe that pressed behind.
"Why hast thou brought us forth for this?"
    The people loudly cry; -
"Were there no graves in Egypt's land,
    That here we come to die?"
But calm and clear above the din
    Arose the prophet's word, -
"Stand still! stand still! - and ye shall see
    The salvation of the Lord!"

"Fear not! - the foes whom now you see,
    Your eyes no more shall view! -
Peace to your fears! - your fathers' God
    This day shall fight for you;
For Egypt, in her haughty pride<...