O Power to whom this earthly clime
Is but an atom in the whole,
O Poet-heart of Space and Time,
O Maker and Immortal Soul,
Within whose glowing rings are bound,
Out of whose sleepless heart had birth
The cloudy blue, the starry round,
And this small miracle of earth:

Who liv'st in every living thing,
And all things are thy script and chart,
Who rid'st upon the eagle's wing,
And yearnest in the human heart;
O Riddle with a single clue,
Love, deathless, protean, secure,
The ever old, the ever new,
O Energy, serene and pure.

Thou, who art also part of me,
Whose glory I have sometime seen,
O Vision of the Ought-to-be,
O Memory of the Might-have-been,
I have had glimpses of thy way,
And moved with winds and walked with stars,

I.

She walks with the wind on the windy height
When the rocks are loud and the waves are white,
And all night long she calls through the night,
"O my children, come home!"
Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud,
Tosses around her like a shroud,
While over the deep her voice rings loud,
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"

II.

Who is she who wanders alone,
When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown?
Who walks all night and makes her moan,
"O my children, come home!"
Whose face is raised to the blinding gale;
Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale,
While over the world goes by her wail,
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"

III.

She walks...

I.

The suns of eighteen centuries have shone
Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone,
And mountain moss, a pillow for His head;
And He, who wandered with the peasant Jew,
And broke with publicans the bread of shame,
And drank with blessings, in His Father's name,
The water which Samaria's outcast drew,
Hath now His temples upon every shore,
Altar and shrine and priest; and incense dim
Evermore rising, with low prayer and hymn,
From lips which press the temple's marble floor,
Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread cross He bore.

II.

Yet as of old, when, meekly "doing good,"
He fed a blind and selfish multitude,
And even the poor companions of His lot
With their dim earthly vision knew...

All ye, who in small bark have following sail'd,
Eager to listen, on the advent'rous track
Of my proud keel, that singing cuts its way,
Backward return with speed, and your own shores
Revisit, nor put out to open sea,
Where losing me, perchance ye may remain
Bewilder'd in deep maze. The way I pass
Ne'er yet was run: Minerva breathes the gale,
Apollo guides me, and another Nine
To my rapt sight the arctic beams reveal.
Ye other few, who have outstretch'd the neck.
Timely for food of angels, on which here
They live, yet never know satiety,
Through the deep brine ye fearless may put out
Your vessel, marking, well the furrow broad
Before you in the wave, that on both sides
Equal returns. Those, glorious, who pass'd o'er
To Colchos, wonder'd not as ye will do,...

Tell me, strange heart, so mysteriously beating -
    Unto what end?
Body and soul so mysteriously meeting,
    Strange friend and friend;
Hand clasped in hand so mysteriously faring,
Say what and why all this dreaming and daring,
    This sowing and reaping and laughing and weeping,
    That ends but in sleeping -
    Only one meaning, only - the End.

Ah! all the love, the gold glory, the singing, -
    Unto what end?
Flowers of April immortally springing,
    Face of one's friend,
Stars of the morning and moon in her quarters,
Shining of suns and running of waters,
    Growing and blowing and snowing and flowing, -
    Ah! where are they going?
    All on one journey, all to - the End.

And if you meet the Canon of Chimay,
    As going to Ortaise you well may do,
Greet him from John of Castel Neuf, and say
    All that I tell you, for all this is true.

This Geffray Teste Noire was a Gascon thief,
    Who, under shadow of the English name,
Pilled all such towns and countries as were lief
    To King Charles and St. Denis; thought it blame

If anything escaped him; so my lord,
    The Duke of Berry, sent Sir John Bonne Lance,
And other knights, good players with the sword,
    To check this thief, and give the land a chance.

Therefore we set our bastides round the tower
    That Geffray held, the strong thief! like a king,
High perch'd upon the rock of Ventadour,
    Hopelessly strong by Christ! It was mid spring,

When fi...

    The stars are all watching;
    God's angel is catching
At thy skirts in the darkness deep!
    Gold hinges grating,
    The mighty dead waiting,
Why dost thou sleep?

    Years without number,
    Ages of slumber,
Stiff in the track of the infinite One!
    Dead, can I think it?
    Dropt like a trinket,
A thing whose uses are done!

    White wings are crossing,
    Glad waves are tossing,
The earth flames out in crimson and green
    Spring is appearing,
    Summer is nearing--
Where hast thou been?

    Down in some cavern,
    Death's sleepy tavern,
Housing, carousing with spectres of night?
    There is my right hand!
    Grasp it full tight and
Spring to the light.

    Wonder, oh, wonder!<...

In the dewy depths of the graveyard
    I lie in the tangled grass,
And watch, in the sea of azure,
    The white cloud-islands pass.

The birds in the rustling branches
    Sing gaily overhead;
Grey stones like sentinel spectres
    Are guarding the silent dead.

The early flowers sleep shaded
    In the cool green noonday glooms;
The broken light falls shuddering
    On the cold white face of the tombs.

Without, the world is smiling
    In the infinite love of God,
But the sunlight fails and falters
    When it falls on the churchyard sod.

On me the joyous rapture
    Of a heart's first love is shed,
But it falls on my heart as coldly
    As sunlight on the dead.

Memorial day for the war dead.Add now
the grief of all your losses to their grief,
even of a woman that has left you.Mix
sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,
which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning
on one day for easy, convenient memory.

Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,
in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."
No use to weep inside and to scream outside.
Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.

Memorial day.Bitter salt is dressed up
as a little girl with flowers.
The streets are cordoned off with ropes,
for the marching together of the living and the dead.
Children with a grief not their own march slowly,
like stepping over broken glass.

The flautis...

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant norther...

I gave myself to him,
And took himself for pay.
The solemn contract of a life
Was ratified this way.

The wealth might disappoint,
Myself a poorer prove
Than this great purchaser suspect,
The daily own of Love

Depreciate the vision;
But, till the merchant buy,
Still fable, in the isles of spice,
The subtle cargoes lie.

At least, 't is mutual risk, --
Some found it mutual gain;
Sweet debt of Life, -- each night to owe,
Insolvent, every noon.

Where art thou, beloved To-morrow?
When young and old, and strong and weak,
Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,
Thy sweet smiles we ever seek, -
In thy place - ah! well-a-day!
We find the thing we fled - To-day.

When peevish flaws his soul have stirred
    To fretful tears for crossed desires,
Obedient to his mother's word
    My child to banishment retires.

As disappears the moon, when wind
    Heaps miles of mist her visage o'er,
So vanisheth his face behind
    The cloud of his white pinafore.

I cannot then come near my child--
    A gulf between of gainful loss;
He to the infinite exiled--
    I waiting, for I cannot cross.

Ah then, what wonder, passing show,
    The Isis-veil behind it brings--
Like that self-coffined creatures know,
    Remembering legs, foreseeing wings!

Mysterious moment! When or how
    Is the bewildering change begun?
Hid in far deeps the awful now
    When turns his being to the sun!

A light...

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men
And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse
Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth,
But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt
Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these shades
Are still the abodes of gladness; the thick roof
Of green and stirring branches is alive
And musical with birds, that ...

Night of Mid-June, in heavy vapours dying,
Like priestly hands thy holy touch is lying
Upon the world's wide brow;
God-like and grand all nature is commanding
The "peace that passes human understanding";
I, also, feel it now.

What matters it to-night, if one life treasure
I covet, is not mine! Am I to measure
The gifts of Heaven's decree
By my desires? O! life for ever longing
For some far gift, where many gifts are thronging,
God wills, it may not be.

Am I to learn that longing, lifted higher,
Perhaps will catch the gleam of sacred fire
That shows my cross is gold?
That underneath this cross - however lowly,
A jewel rests, white, beautiful and holy,
Whose worth can not be told.

Like to a scene I watched one day in wonder: -
A ...

Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights
Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights.

Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon!
Soon they returned, and after strange adventures,
Settled at Balham by the end of June,
Their money was in Can. Pacs. B. Debentures,
And in Antofagastas. Still he went
Cityward daily; still she did abide
At home. And both were really quite content
With work and social pleasures. Then they died.
They left three children (beside George, who drank);
The eldest Jane, who married Mr. Bell,
William, the head-clerk in the County Bank,
And Henry, a stock-broker, doing well.

[1]


Youth's endearing charms are fled;
Hoary locks deform my head;
Bloomy graces, dalliance gay,
All the flowers of life decay.[2]
Withering age begins to trace
Sad memorials o'er my face;
Time has shed its sweetest bloom
All the future must be gloom.
This it is that sets me sighing;
Dreary is the thought of dying![3]
Lone and dismal is the road,
Down to Pluto's dark abode;
And, when once the journey's o'er,
Ah! we can return no more!

Her Vivien eyes, - beware! beware!
Though they be stars, a deadly snare
They set beneath her night of hair.
Regard them not! lest, drawing near
As sages once in old Chaldee
Thou shouldst become a worshiper,
And they thy evil destiny.

Her Vivien eyes, - away! away!
Though they be springs, remorseless they
Gleam underneath her brow's bright day.
Turn, turn aside, whate'er the cost!
Lest in their deeps thou lures behold,
Through which thy captive soul were lost,
As was young Hylas once of old.

Her Vivien eyes, - take heed! take heed!
Though they be bibles, none may read
Therein of God or Holy Creed.
Look, look away! lest thou be cursed,
As Merlin was, romances tell,
And in their sorcerous spells immersed,
Hoping for Heaven thou cha...