Content Primroses,
    With hearts at rest in your thick leaves' soft care,
    Peeping as from his mother's lap the child
    Who courts shy shelter from his own open air!--
    Hanging Harebell,
    Whose blue heaven to no wanderer ever closes,
    Though thou still lookest earthward from thy domed cell!--
    Fluttering-wild
    Anemone, so well
    Named of the Wind, to whom thou, fettered-free,
    Yieldest thee, helpless--wilfully,
    With Take me or leave me,
    Sweet Wind, I am thine own Anemone!--
    Thirsty Arum, ever dreaming
    Of lakes in wildernesses gleaming!--
    Fire-winged Pimpernel,
    Communing with some hidden well,
    And secrets with the sun-god holding,
    At fixed hour folding and unfolding!--
    How ...

Somewhere in the realms supernal
Is a home prepared for me,
Where my joys shall be eternal,
And my spirit ever free;
Mortal vision helps not here,
God conceals it from my sight,
By effulgent beams of light;
Oh that He would bring it near!

But I hear a voice say, softly,
"Be content to leave it so,
For God's thoughts are far too lofty
For a man like thee to know;
Human spirits must be free
From their tenements of clay,
Ere they bear that full-orbed day,
Bide thy time and thou shalt see."

I cannot draw back the curtain
That conceals the glory land,
Yet my hope is sure and certain,
For the tracings of God's hand
On the outside do appear,
Like the cherubim of old,
Wrought in needle-work and gold,
Bringing all the glor...

Thou who hast taught the teachers of mankind
How from the least of things the mightiest grow,
What marvel jealous Nature made thee blind,
Lest man should learn what angels long to know?
Thou in the flinty rock, the river's flow,
In the thick-moted sunbeam's sifted light
Hast trained thy downward-pointed tube to show
Worlds within worlds unveiled to mortal sight,
Even as the patient watchers of the night, -
The cyclope gleaners of the fruitful skies, -
Show the wide misty way where heaven is white
All paved with suns that daze our wondering eyes.

Far o'er the stormy deep an empire lies,
Beyond the storied islands of the blest,
That waits to see the lingering day-star rise;
The forest-tinctured Eden of the West;
Whose queen, fair Freedom, twines her iron c...

If gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains,
And racks of subtle torture, if the pains
Of shame, of fiery Hell's tempestuous wave,
Seen through the caverns of the shadowy grave,
Hurling the damned into the murky air
While the meek blest sit smiling; if Despair
And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror
Hunts through the world the homeless steps of Error,
Are the true secrets of the commonweal
To make men wise and just;...
And not the sophisms of revenge and fear,
Bloodier than is revenge...
Then send the priests to every hearth and home
To preach the burning wrath which is to come,
In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw
The frozen tears...
If Satire's scourge could wake the slumbering hounds
Of Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds,
The le...

By fire and cloud, across the desert sand,
And through the parted waves,
From their long bondage, with an outstretched hand,
God led the Hebrew slaves!
Dead as the letter of the Pentateuch,
As Egypt's statues cold,
In the adytum of the sacred book
Now stands that marvel old.
"Lo, God is great!" the simple Moslem says.
We seek the ancient date,
Turn the dry scroll, and make that living phrase
A dead one: "God was great!"
And, like the Coptic monks by Mousa's wells,
We dream of wonders past,
Vague as the tales the wandering Arab tells,
Each drowsier than the last.
O fools and blind! Above the Pyramids
Stretches once more that hand,
And trancëd Egypt, from her stony lids,
Flings back her veil of sand.
And morning-smitten Memnon, singing, wakes...

I.

What human form is this? what form divine?
And who are these that gaze upon his face
Mild, beautiful, and full of heavenly grace,
With whose reflected light the gazers shine?
Saviour, who does not know it to be thine?
Who does not long to fill a gazer's place?
And yet there is no time, there is no space
To keep away thy servants from thy shrine!
Here if we kneel, and watch with faithful eyes,
Thou art not too far for faithful eyes to see,
Thou art not too far to turn and look on me,
To speak to me, and to receive my sighs.
Therefore for ever I forget the skies,
And find an everlasting Sun in thee.

II.

Oh let us never leave that happy throng!
From that low attitude of love not cease!
In all the world there is no other peace,
...

to -----

Sometimes my heart by cruel care opprest
Faints from the weight of woe upon my breast,
My soul embittered far beyond belief; -
As damned one, drinking galling draughts of grief,
Which boils and burns within without relief,
While fervid flames inflict the wounds unhealed,
With hellish horrors not to man revealed;
When Peace and Joy seem wrapt in sable shrouds,
And young Hope's heaven is black with lowering clouds
'Tis then thy vision comes before my view,
'Tis then I see those beaming eyes of blue,
And hear thy gentle voice in accents kind,
And see thy cheerful smile before my mind;
And taking heart, I battle on anew;
And thank my God for sending to my soul
His own blest, soothing balm of peace again,
Who sometimes still as in the days of ol...

(See Note 67)

I honor you, who, though refused, affronted,
Have heard the voice, and victory have won;
I honor you, who still by malice hunted,
Show miracles of faith and power done.

I honor you, God-thirsting soul so driven,
'Mid scorn and need the spirit's war to wage;
I honor you, by Gudbrand's valley given,
And of her sons the foremost in this age.

I do not share your faith, your daring dreaming;
This parts us not, the spirit's paths are broad.
For, all things great and noble round us streaming,
I worship them, because I worship God.

Upon the eyes, the lips, the feet,
On all the passages of sense,
The atoning oil is spread with sweet
Renewal of lost innocence.

The feet, that lately ran so fast
To meet desire, are soothly sealed;
The eyes, that were so often cast
On vanity, are touched and healed.

From troublous sights and sounds set free;
In such a twilight hour of breath,
Shall one retrace his life, or see,
Through shadows, the true face of death?

Vials of mercy! Sacring oils!
I know not where nor when I come,
Nor through what wanderings and toils,
To crave of you Viaticum.

Yet, when the walls of flesh grow weak,
In such an hour, it well may be,
Through mist and darkness, light will break,
And each anointed sense will see.

[1]

That man his Maker can deceive,
Is monstrous folly to believe.
The labyrinthine mazes of the heart
Are open to His eyes in every part.
Whatever one may do, or think, or feel,
From Him no darkness can the thing conceal.
A pagan once, of graceless heart and hollow,
Whose faith in gods, I'm apprehensive,
Was quite as real as expensive.
Consulted, at his shrine, the god Apollo.
'Is what I hold alive, or not?'
Said he, - a sparrow having brought,
Prepared to wring its neck, or let it fly,
As need might be, to give the god the lie.
Apollo saw the trick,
And answer'd quick,
'Dead or alive, show me your sparrow,
And cease to set for me a trap
Which can but cause yourself mishap.
I see afar, and far I shoot my arrow.'

The blight of life, the demon, Thought - BYRON.


With demon's shriek or angel's voice,
'Mid hellish gloom, or heav'nly light,
Thought haunts our path o'er land and sea,
And dwells with us, by day and night.

In roomy hall, or narrow hut,
It withers, blasts and kills with gloom,
Or gently onward smooths the path
Of him, who gives the tyrant room.

With siren voice it soothes our woe;
It dwells with us in blissful dreams;
But when we wake, it tells us then,
That it is far from what it seems.

Rebellious o'er its prostrate slave,
Its iron chain of bondage swings,
Or, govern'd by a master hand,
In numbers loud and strong, it sings.

And, with its keys of rarest mould,
Its stores of hoarded wealth unlocks,
It dives for ...

11.30 P.M., DEC. 31


Friend, when the year is on the wing,
'Tis held a fair and comely thing
To turn reflective glances
Over the days' forbidden Scroll,
See if we're better on the whole,
And average our chances.

Yet 'tis an awful thing to drag
Each separate deed from out the bag
That up till now has hidden 't,
And bring before the shuddering view
All that we swore we wouldn't do,
Or should have done, but didn't.

The broken code, the baffled laws
Our little private faults and flaws,
And every naughty habit,
Come whistling through the Waste of Life,
Until one longs to take a knife,
Feel for his heart, and stab it.

Unchanged, exultant, one and all
Rise up spontaneous to the call,
And bring their stings behind ...

(With apologies to a beautiful poem.)


Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe decrease
By cautious birth-control and die in peace)
Mellow with learning lightly took the word
That marked him not with them that love the Lord,
And told the angel of the book and pen
"Write me as one that loves his fellow-men:
For them alone I labour; to reclaim
The ragged roaming Bedouin and to tame
To ordered service; to uproot their vine
Who mock the Prophet, being mad with wine,
Let daylight through their tents and through their lives,
Number their camels, even count their wives,
Plot out the desert into streets and squares;
And count it a more fruitful work than theirs
Who lift a vain and visionary love
To your vague Allah in the skies above."

Gently replie...

And this man was "an infidel!" Ah, no!
The tale's incredible it was not so.
The untutored savage through the world may plod,
Reckless of Heaven and ignorant of his God;
But that a mind that's culled improvement's flowers
From all her brightest amaranthine bowers,
A mind whose keen and comprehensive glance
Comprised at once a world should worship chance,
Is strangely inconsistent seems to me
The very essence of absurdity;
Who, from the exhaustless granary of Heaven,
Receives the blessings so profusely given,
Looks with a curious eye on Nature's face,
Forever beaming with a new-born grace,
And dares with impious voice aloud proclaim
He knows no Heaven but this no God but Fame.
Lord, in refusing to acknowledge Thee,
Vain man denies his own reality;
But ...

Where a river roars in rapids
And doves in maples fret,
Where peace has decked the pastures
Our guardian angels met.

Long they had sought each other
In God's mysterious name,
Had climbed the solemn chaos tides
Alone, with hope aflame:

Amid the demon deeps had wound
By many a fearful way.
As they beheld each other
Their shout made glad the day.

No need of purse delayed them,
No hand of friend or kin -
Nor menace of the bell and book,
Nor fear of mortal sin.

You did not speak, my girl,
At this, our parting hour.
Long we held each other
And watched their deeds of power.

They made a curious Eden.
We saw that it was good.
We thought with them in unison.
We proudly understood

Their amaranth ...

    I see the work of others, and my heart
    Sinks as my own achievement I compare.
    I will not be irresolute, nor despair,
    But battle strongly for my struggling art

    Convinced against conviction that my part
    Equally with my masters I can bear;
    Although their monuments are very fair,
    Enriched with statues, and I stand apart

    And gaze upon my little heap of stones
    Which I was given to build with, very few
    As yet laid into place, but I will lay

    Blind to these marble monuments and thrones,
    Building as though I confidently knew
    My ultimate end,, a stone in place each day.

Fortune may pass us by:
Follow her flying feet.
Love, all we ask, deny:
Never admit defeat.
Take heart again and try.
Never say die.

Sometimes, O Lord, thou lightest in my head
    A lamp that well might pharos all the lands;
Anon the light will neither rise nor spread:
    Shrouded in danger gray the beacon stands!

A pharos? Oh dull brain! poor dying lamp
    Under a bushel with an earthy smell!
Mouldering it stands, in rust and eating damp,
    While the slow oil keeps oozing from its cell!

For me it were enough to be a flower
    Knowing its root in thee, the Living, hid,
Ordained to blossom at the appointed hour,
    And wake or sleep as thou, my Nature, bid;

But hear my brethren in their darkling fright!
    Hearten my lamp that it may shine abroad
Then will they cry--Lo, there is something bright!
    Who kindled it if not the shining God?