Sweet Chance, that led my steps abroad,
Beyond the town, where wild flowers grow -
A rainbow and a cuckoo, Lord,
How rich and great the times are now!
    Know, all ye sheep
    And cows, that keep
On staring that I stand so long
In grass that's wet from heavy rain -
A rainbow and a cuckoo's song
May never come together again;
    May never come
    This side the tomb.

As one who, walking in the twilight gloom,
    Hears round about him voices as it darkens,
And seeing not the forms from which they come,
    Pauses from time to time, and turns and hearkens;

So walking here in twilight, O my friends!
    I hear your voices, softened by the distance,
And pause, and turn to listen, as each sends
    His words of friendship, comfort, and assistance.

If any thought of mine, or sung or told,
    Has ever given delight or consolation,
Ye have repaid me back a thousand-fold,
    By every friendly sign and salutation.

Thanks for the sympathies that ye have shown!
    Thanks for each kindly word, each silent token,
That teaches me, when seeming most alone,
    Friends are around us, though no word be spoken.

Ki...

I dreamed, and lo, I saw in my dream a beautiful gateway,
    Arched at the top, and crowned with turrets lance-windowed and olden,
    And sculptured in arabesque, all knotted and woven and spangled;
    A wonderful legend ran, in letters purple and golden
    Written in leaves and blossoms, inextricably intertangled,
A legend I could not resolve, crowning the gate so stately.

Like statues carven and niched in the front of some old cathedral,
    Four angels stood each in his turret, immovable warders,
    The first with reverend locks snow-white, and a silver volume
    Of beard that twinkled with frost, and hung to the icicled borders
    That fringed his girdle beneath: ancient his look was, and solemn,
Like a wrinkled and bearded saint blessing some worshipping bedral.

Leafless are the trees; their purple branches
Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral,
            Rising silent
In the Red Sea of the Winter sunset.

From the hundred chimneys of the village,
Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,
            Smoky columns
Tower aloft into the air of amber.

At the window winks the flickering fire-light;
Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer,
            Social watch-fires
Answering one another through the darkness.

On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing,
And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree
            For its freedom
Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them.

By the fireside there are old men seated,
Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,
            Asking sadly
Of the Pa...

BOOK OF HAFIS.

Spirit let us bridegroom call,

And the word the bride;
Known this wedding is to all

Who have Hafis tried.

THE UNLIMITED.

That thou can't never end, doth make thee great,
And that thou ne'er beginnest, is thy fate.
Thy song is changeful as yon starry frame,
End and beginning evermore the same;
And what the middle bringeth, but contains
What was at first, and what at last remains.
Thou art of joy the true and minstrel-source,
From thee pours wave on wave with ceaseless force.
A mouth that's aye prepared to kiss,

A breast whence flows a loving song,
A throat that finds no draught amiss,

An open heart that knows no wrong.

And what though all the world should sink!

Hafis, with thee,...

To kneel before some saintly shrine,
To breathe the health of airs divine,
Or bathe where sacred rivers flow,
The cowled and turbaned pilgrims go.
I too, a palmer, take, as they
With staff and scallop-shell, my way
To feel, from burdening cares and ills,
The strong uplifting of the hills.

The years are many since, at first,
For dreamed-of wonders all athirst,
I saw on Winnipesaukee fall
The shadow of the mountain wall.
Ah! where are they who sailed with me
The beautiful island-studded sea?
And am I he whose keen surprise
Flashed out from such unclouded eyes?

Still, when the sun of summer burns,
My longing for the hills returns;
And northward, leaving at my back
The warm vale of the Merrimac,
I go to meet the winds of morn,
...

[Footnote: Sickness may be often an incentive to poetical composition; I found it so; and I esteem the following lines only because they remind me of past feelings which I would not willingly forget.]


Health! I seek thee; - dost thou love
The mountain top or quiet vale,
Or deign o'er humbler hills to rove
On showery June's dark south-west gale?
If so, I'll meet all blasts that blow,
With silent step, but not forlorn;
Though, goddess, at thy shrine I bow,
And woo thee each returning morn.

I seek thee where, with all his might,
The joyous bird his rapture tells,
Amidst the half-excluded light,
That gilds the fox-glove's pendant bells;
Where, cheerly up this bold hill's side
The deep'ning groves triumphant climb;
In groves Delight and Peace abide,

    Daylight fades away.
        Is the Lord at hand
    In the shadows gray
        Stealing on the land?

        Gently from the east
            Come the shadows gray;
        But our lowly priest
            Nearer is than they.

    It is darkness quite.
        Is the Lord at hand,
    In the cloak of night
        Stolen upon the land?

        But I see no night,
            For my Lord is here
        With him dark is light,
            With him far is near.

    List! the cock's awake.
        Is the Lord at hand?
    Cometh he to make
        Light in all the land?

        Long ago he made
            Morning in my heart;
        Long ago he bade
            Shadowy things depart.

The following "Prothalamion" was recently discovered among some other rubbish in Pope's Villa at Twickenham.It was written on the backs of old envelopes, and has evidently not received the master's last touches. Some of the lines afford an admirable instance of the way in which great authors frequently repeat themselves.

Nothing so true as what you once let fall,--
"To growl at something is the lot of all;
Contentment is a gem on earth unknown,
And Perfect Happiness the wizard's stone.
Give me," you cried, "to see my duty clear,
And room to work, unhindered in my sphere;
To live my life, and work my work alone,
Unloved while living, and unwept when gone.
Let none my triumphs or my failures share,
Nor leave a sorrowing wife and joyful heir."

Go, like St. Simon, on your lone...

Give to barrows, trays and pans
Grace and glimmer of romance;
Bring the moonlight into noon
Hid in gleaming piles of stone;
On the city's paved street
Plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet;
Let spouting fountains cool the air,
Singing in the sun-baked square;
Let statue, picture, park and hall,
Ballad, flag and festival,
The past restore, the day adorn,
And make to-morrow a new morn.
So shall the drudge in dusty frock
Spy behind the city clock
Retinues of airy kings,
Skirts of angels, starry wings,
His fathers shining in bright fables,
His children fed at heavenly tables.
'T is the privilege of Art
Thus to play its cheerful part,
Man on earth to acclimate
And bend the exile to his fate,
And, moulded of one element
With the da...

Truth is a golden thread, seen here and there
In small bright specks upon the visible side
Of our strange being’s party-coloured web.
How rich the converse! ’Tis a vein of ore
Emerging now and then on Earth’s rude breast,
But flowing full below. Like islands set
At distant intervals on Ocean’s face,
We see it on our course; but in the depths
The mystic colonnade unbroken keeps
Its faithful way, invisible but sure.
Oh, if it be so, wherefore do we men
Pass by so many marks, so little heeding?

When this burning flesh
Burns down in Time's slow fire to a glowing ash;
When these lips have uttered
The last word, and the ears' last echoes fluttered;
And crumbled these firm bones
As in the chemic air soft blackened stones;
When all that was mortal made
Owns its mortality, proud yet afraid;

Then when I stumble in
The broad light, from this twilight weak and thin,
What of me will change,
What of that brightness will be new and strange?
Shall I indeed endure
New solitude in that high air and pure,
Aching for these fingers
On which my assurèd hand now shuts and lingers?

Now when I look back
On manhood's and on childhood's far-stretched track,
I see but a little child
In a green sunny world-home; there enisled
By another, cloudy...

The battle will not cease
Till once again on those white steeds ye ride,
O heaven-descended Twins,
Before humanity's bewildered host.
Our javelins
Fly wide,
And idle is our cannon's boast.
Lead us, triumphant Brethren, Love and Peace.
A fairer Golden Fleece
Our more adventurous Argo fain would seek,
But save, O Sons of Jove,
Your blended light go with us, vain employ
It were to rove
This bleak,
Blind waste. To unimagined joy
Guide us, immortal Brethren, Love and Peace.

(Written after the British Service at Trinity Church, New York)


I.

Before those golden altar-lights we stood,
    Each one of us remembering his own dead.
A more than earthly beauty seemed to brood
    On that hushed throng, and bless each bending head.

Beautiful on that gold, the deep-sea blue
    Of those young seamen, ranked on either side,
Blent with the khaki, while the silence grew
    Deep, as for wings--Oh, deep as England's pride.

Beautiful on that gold, two banners rose--
    Two flags that told how Freedom's realm was made,
One fair with stars of hope, and one that shows
    The glorious cross of England's long crusade;

Two flags, now joined, till that high will be done
Which sent them forth to make the whole world one...

I have been pondering what our teachers call
    The mystery of Pain; and lo! my thought
    After it's half-blind reaching out has caught
This truth and held it fast. We may not fall
    Beyond our mounting; stung by life's annoy,
    Deeper we feel the mystery of Joy.

Sometimes they steal across us like a breath
    Of Eastern perfume in a darkened room,
    These joys of ours; we grope on through the gloom
Seeking some common thing, and from its sheath
    Unloose, unknowing, some bewildering scent
    Of spice-thronged memories of the Orient.

Sometimes they dart across our turbid sky
    Like a quick flash after a heated day.
    A moment, where the sombrous shadows lay
We see a glory. Though it passed us by
    No earthly power can filch that ...

Foil'd by our fellow-men, depress'd, outworn,
We leave the brutal world to take its way,
And, Patience! in another life, we say
The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne.

And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn
The world's poor, routed leavings? or will they,
Who fail'd under the heat of this life's day,
Support the fervours of the heavenly morn?

No, no! the energy of life may be
Kept on after the grave, but not begun;
And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife,

From strength to strength advancing, only he,
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.

The sea of the years that endure not
Whose tide shall endure till we die
And know what the seasons assure not,
If death be or life be a lie,
Sways hither the spirit and thither,
A waif in the swing of the sea
Whose wrecks are of memories that wither
As leaves of a tree.
We hear not and hail not with greeting
The sound of the wings of the years,
The storm of the sound of them beating,
That none till it pass from him hears:
But tempest nor calm can imperil
The treasures that fade not or fly;
Change bids them not change and be sterile,
Death bids them not die.
Hearts plighted in youth to the royal
High service of hope and of song,
Sealed fast for endurance as loyal,
And proved of the years as they throng,
Conceive not, believe not, and fear no...

[1]

No flowery path to glory leads.
This truth no better voucher needs
Than Hercules, of mighty deeds.
Few demigods, the tomes of fable
Reveal to us as being able
Such weight of task-work to endure:
In history, I find still fewer.
One such, however, here behold -
A knight by talisman made bold,
Within the regions of romance,
To seek adventures with the lance.
There rode a comrade at his ride,
And as they rode they both espied
This writing on a post: -
"Wouldst see, sir valiant knight,
A thing whereof the sight
No errant yet can boast?
Thou hast this torrent but to ford,
And, lifting up, alone,
The elephant of stone
Upon its margin shored,
Upbear it to the mountain's brow,
Round which, aloft before thee now,