Mine is the shape forever set between
The thought and form, the vision and the deed;
The hidden light, the glory all unseen,
I bring to mortal senses, mortal need.

Who loves me not, my sorrowing slave is he,
Bent with the burden, knowing oft the rod;
But he who loves me shall my master be,
And use me with the joyance of a god.

Man's lord or servant, still I am his friend;
Desire for me is simple as his breath;
Yea, waiting, old and patient, for the end,
He prays that he may find me after death!

Now to those who search the deep,
    Gleam of Hope and Kindly Light,
Once, before you turn to sleep,
    Breathe a message through the night.
Never doubt that they'll receive it.
Send it, once, and you'll believe it.

Wrecks that burn against the stars,
    Decks where death is wallowing green,
Snare the breath among their spars,
    Hear the flickering threads between,
Quick, through all the storms that blind them,
Quick with words that rush to find them.

Think you these aërial wires
    Whisper more than spirits may?
Think you that our strong desires
    Touch no distance when we pray?
Think you that no wings are flying
'Twixt the living and the dying?

Inland, here, upon your knees,
    You shall breathe from ur...

The South-wind brings
Life, sunshine and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire;
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost, he cannot restore;
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.

I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs;
And he, the wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Outvalued every pulsing sound
Within the air's cerulean round,--
The hyacinthine boy, for whom
Morn well might break and April bloom,
The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,--
Has disappeared from the Day's eye;
Far and wide she cannot find him;
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
Re...

    The times are not degenerate.    Man's faith
Mounts higher than of old.    No crumbling creed
Can take from the immortal soul the need
    Of that supreme Creator, God.    The wraith
Of dead beliefs we cherished in our youth
Fades but to let us welcome new-born Truth.

    Man may not worship at the ancient shrine
Prone on his face, in self-accusing scorn.
That night is past.    He hails a fairer morn,
    And knows himself a something all divine;
Not humble worm whose heritage is sin,
But, born of God, he feels the Christ withal.

    Not loud his prayers, as in the olden time,
But deep his reverence for that mighty force,
That occult working of the great All-Source,
    Which makes the present era so sublime.
Religion now means something high a...

Allegorical Statue in the Style of the Renaissance

for Ernest Christophe, sculptor

Let us observe this prize, of Tuscan charm;
In how the muscles of the body flow
Those holy sisters, Grace and Strength, abound.
This woman, this extraordinary piece,
Divinely robust, admirably slim,
Was made to be enthroned on sumptuous beds
As entertainment for a pope or prince.

Also, observe the fine voluptuous smile
Where Self-conceit parades its ecstasy;
This long, sly, languorous and mocking gaze;
This dainty visage, with its filmy veil,
Each trait of which cries out triumphantly,
'Pleasure invites Me, and I wear Love's crown!'
In this creation of such majesty
Excitement flows from her gentility!
Let us approach and look from every side!

O ...

A stately church by pious hands erected long ago,
Was found to lack a vesper bell, by which the poor might know
The hour of prayer, the hour of mass, and who had lately died,
The hour when gent and bonny lass, so timid at his side,
Would stand before the surpliced priest, and twain would pledge their troth,
The hour in which the priest would vent on heretic his wrath.
The faithful then were called upon to bring from home and mine
The metal for the holy bell, which must be strong and fine.
In smelting pot of massive size they placed the needed ore;
A molten mass it soon became, but ere in mould they pour,
And thus provide a bell for God to grace His temple fair,
In crowds the people came, to see the metal glowing there.
Then as they passed, with hearts devout, each took a silver c...

Hear a word, a word in season, for the day is drawing nigh,
When the Cause shall call upon us, some to live, and some to die!

He that dies shall not die lonely, many an one hath gone before;
He that lives shall bear no burden heavier than the life they bore.

Nothing ancient is their story, e'en but yesterday they bled,
Youngest they of earth's beloved, last of all the valiant dead.

E'en the tidings we are telling was the tale they had to tell,
E'en the hope that our hearts cherish, was the hope for which they fell.

In the grave where tyrants thrust them, lies their labour and their pain,
But undying from their sorrow springeth up the hope again.

Mourn not therefore, nor lament it, that the world outlives their life;
Voice and vision yet they give us, maki...

Thou, who dost dwell alone,
Thou, who dost know thine own,
Thou, to whom all are known
From the cradle to the grave,
Save, oh, save.
From the world’s temptations,
From tribulations;
From that fierce anguish
Wherein we languish;
From that torpor deep
Wherein we lie asleep,
Heavy as death, cold as the grave;
Save, oh, save.

When the Soul, growing clearer,
Sees God no nearer:
When the Soul, mounting higher,
To God comes no nigher:
But the arch-fiend Pride
Mounts at her side,
Foiling her high emprize,
Sealing her eagle eyes,
And when she fain would soar.
Makes idols to adore;
Changing the pure emotion
Of her high devotion,
To a skin-deep sense
Of her own eloquence:
Strong to deceive, strong to enslave,

On Tabor's height a glory came,
And, shrined in clouds of lambent flame,
The awestruck, hushed disciples saw
Christ and the prophets of the law.
Moses, whose grand and awful face
Of Sinai's thunder bore the trace,
And wise Elias, - in his eyes
The shade of Israel's prophecies, -
Stood in that wide, mysterious light,
Than Syrian noons more purely bright,
One on each hand, and high between
Shone forth the godlike Nazarene.
They bowed their heads in holy fright, -
No mortal eyes could bear the sight, -
And when they looked again, behold!
The fiery clouds had backward rolled,
And borne aloft in grandeur lonely,
Nothing was left "save Jesus only."

Resplendent type of things to be!
We read its mystery to-day
With clearer eyes than even they...

        The hurry of the times affects us so
    In this swift rushing hour, we crowd and press
        And thrust each other backward as we go,
    And do not pause to lay sufficient stress
    Upon that good, strong, true word, Earnestness.
        In our impetuous haste, could we but know
        Its full, deep meaning, its vast import, oh,
    Then might we grasp the secret of success!
        In that receding age when men were great,
    The bone and sinew of their purpose lay
    In this one word. God likes an earnest soul -
        Too earnest to be eager. Soon or late
    It leaves the spent horde breathless by the way,
    And stands serene, triumphant at the goal.

Israel, in ancient days,
Not only had a view
Of Sinai in a blaze,
But learn’d the Gospel too;
The types and figures were a glass
In which they saw a Saviour’s face.


The paschal sacrifice,
And blood-besprinkled door,[1]
Seen with enlighten’d eyes,
And once applied with power,
Would teach the need of other blood,
To reconcile an angry God.


The Lamb, the Dove, set forth
His perfect innocence,[2]
Whose blood of matchless worth
Should be the soul’s defence;
For he who can for sin atone,
Must have no failings of his own.


The scape-goat on his head[3]
The people’s trespass bore,
And, to the desert led,
Was to be seen no more:
In him our Surety seem’d to say,
“Behol...

O God! my God! have mercy now.
I faint, I fall. Men say that Thou
Didst die for me, for such as me,
Patient of ill, and death, and scorn,
And that my sin was as a thorn
Among the thorns that girt Thy brow,
Wounding Thy soul.–That even now,
In this extremest misery
Of ignorance, I should require
A sign! and if a bolt of fire
Would rive the slumbrous summer noon
While I do pray to Thee alone,
Think my belief would stronger grow!
Is not my human pride brought low?
The boastings of my spirit still?
The joy I had in my free-will
All cold, and dead, and corpse-like grown?
And what is left to me but Thou,
And faith in Thee? Men pass me by;
Christians with happy countenances–
And children all seem full of Thee!
And women smile with saint-like ...

Beside that milestone where the level sun,
Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays
On word and work irrevocably done,
Life’s blending threads of good and ill outspun,
I hear, O friends! your words of cheer and praise,
Half doubtful if myself or otherwise.
Like him who, in the old Arabian joke,
A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke.
Thanks not the less. With not unglad surprise
I see my life-work through your partial eyes;
Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs
A higher value than of right belongs,
You do but read between the written lines
The finer grace of unfulfilled designs

Whene'er a noble deed is wrought,
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,
    Our hearts, in glad surprise,
    To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,
    And lifts us unawares
    Out of all meaner cares.

Honor to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
    And by their overflow
    Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,
    The trenches cold and damp,
    The starved and frozen camp,--

The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
    The cheerless corridors,
    The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
    Pass through the glimmer...

The vision of a haloed host
That weep around an empty throne;
And, aureoles dark and angels dead,
Man with his own life stands alone.

'I am,' he says his bankrupt creed:
'I am,' and is again a clod:
The sparrow starts, the grasses stir,
For he has said the name of God.

I have a fellowship with every shade
Of changing nature: with the tempest hour
My soul goes forth to claim her early dower
Of living princedom; and her wings have staid
Amidst the wildest uproar undismayed!
Yet she hath often owned a better power,
And blessed the gentle coming of the shower,
The speechless majesty of love arrayed
In lowly virtue, under which disguise
Full many a princely thing hath passed her by;
And she from homely intercourse of eyes
Hath gathered visions wider than the sky,
And seen the withered heart of man arise
Peaceful as God, and full of majesty.

I am glad when men of genius
    Array a common thought,
In imperishable beauty
    That it cannot be forgot.

The heart thoughts all bright and burnished
    By high poetic art,
As sweet as the wood-bird's warble
    Touching the very heart.

Have not I, poor workday mortal,
    Some thoughts of living light,
In the spirit's inner chambers,
    Moving with spirit might?

And they come in the fair spring time
    Of heart and life and year,
When sweet Nature's wild rejoicings,
    Draws votaries very near

To the heart of all that's lovely
    On earth and in the sky;
Making audible the music
    Of the inner melody.

Underlying all the sunshine,
    Whispering through every breeze,
As it crests the ruffle...

My new-cut ashlar takes the light
Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
By my own work, before the night,
Great Overseer I make my prayer.

If there be good in that I wrought,
Thy hand compelled it, Master, Thine;
Where I have failed to meet Thy thought
I know, through Thee, the blame is mine.

One instant's toil to Thee denied
Stands all Eternity's offence,
Of that I did with Thee to guide
To Thee, through Thee, be excellence.

Who, lest all thought of Eden fade,
Bring'st Eden to the craftsman's brain,
Godlike to muse o'er his own trade
And Manlike stand with God again.

The depth and dream of my desire,
The bitter paths wherein I stray,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay!

On...