I feel the stirrings in me of great things.
New half-fledged thoughts rise up and beat their wings,
And tremble on the margin of their nest,
Then flutter back, and hide within my breast.

Beholding space, they doubt their untried strength.
Beholding men, they fear them. But at length
Grown all too great and active for the heart
That broods them with such tender mother art,
Forgetting fear, and men, and all, that hour,
Save the impelling consciousness of power
That stirs within them - they shall soar away
Up to the very portals of the Day.

Oh, what exultant rapture thrills me through
When I contemplate all those thoughts may do;
Like snow-white eagles penetrating space,
They may explore full many an unknown place,
And build their nests on mountain he...

No personal; a God divinely crowned
With gold and raised upon a golden throne
Deep in a golden glory, whence he nods
Man this or that, and little more than man!

And shalt thou see Him individual?
Not till the freed intelligence hath sought
Ten hundred hundred years to rise and love,
Piercing the singing cycles under God,
Their iridescent evolutions orbed
In wild prismatic splendors, shall it see
Through God-propinquity become a god
See, lightening out of spheric harmonies,
Resplendencies of empyrean light,
Prisms and facets of ten million beams
Starring a crystal of berainbowed rays,
And in this - eyes of burning sapphire, eyes
Deep as the music of the beautiful;
And o'er the eyes, limpid hierarchal brows,
As they were lilies of seraphic fire;<...

Our lives seem filled with things of little worth;
A thousand petty cares arise each day
Which bring our soaring thoughts from heaven to earth,
Reminding us that we have feet of clay;
Yet we will not from path of duty stray
If we amidst them all cleave to the right;
Nor great nor small are actions in His sight;
Through lowly vale He shows our feet the way.

Our early dreams may not be realized;
The roseate sky now proves quite commonplace;
The constellations we so highly prized
Have vanished all--nor left the slightest trace
Of former glory in its azure face,
But high o'er all beams out the polar star
To guide us safe through rock and sandy bar;
Life is complete and its cap-stone is grace.

In God alone, the perfect end,
Wilt thou find thyself or friend.

They crowded weeping from the teacher’s house,
Crying aloud their fear at what he taught,
Old men and young men, wives and maids unwed,
And children screaming in the crowds unsought:
Some to their temples with accustomed feet
Bent-as the oxen go beneath the rod,
To fling themselves before some pictured saint,
“Alas!    God help us if there is no God.”

Some to the bed-side of their dying kind
To clasp with arms afraid to loose their hold;
Some to a church-yard falling on a grave
To kiss the carven name with lips as cold.
Some watched from break of day into the night.
The flash of birds, the bloom of flower and tree,
The whirling worlds that glimmer in the dark,
All said: “God help us if no God there be.”

Some hid in caves and chattered mad with fear...

Here shunning idleness at once and praise,
This radiant pile nine rural sisters[130] raise;
The glittering emblem of each spotless dame,
Clear as her soul, and shining as her frame;
Beauty which nature only can impart,
And such a polish as disgraces art;
But Fate disposed them in this humble sort,
And hid in deserts what would charm a court.

    O Peter, wherefore didst thou doubt?
    Indeed the spray flew fast about,
    But he was there whose walking foot
    Could make the wandering hills take root;
    And he had said, "Come down to me,"
    Else hadst thou not set foot on sea!
    Christ did not call thee to thy grave!
    Was it the boat that made thee brave?

    "Easy for thee who wast not there
    To think thou more than I couldst dare!
    It hardly fits thee though to mock
    Scared as thou wast that railway shock!
    Who saidst this morn, 'Wife, we must go--
    The plague will soon be here, I know!'
    Who, when thy child slept--not to death--
    Saidst, 'Life is now not worth a breath!'"

    Saint Peter, thou rebukest well!
    It needs no tempest me to quell,

The more I've viewed this world, the more I've found,
That filled as 'tis with scenes and creatures rare,
Fancy commands within her own bright round
    A world of scenes and creatures far more fair.
Nor is it that her power can call up there
    A single charm, that's not from Nature won,--
No more than rainbows in their pride can wear
    A single tint unborrowed from the sun;
But 'tis the mental medium; it shines thro',
That lends to Beauty all its charm and hue;
As the same light that o'er the level lake
    One dull monotony of lustre flings,
Will, entering in the rounded raindrop, make
Colors as gay as those on angels' wings!

Men said at vespers: "All is well!"
In one wild night the city fell;
Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain
Before the fiery hurricane.

On threescore spires had sunset shone,
Where ghastly sunrise looked on none.
Men clasped each other's hands, and said
"The City of the West is dead!"

Brave hearts who fought, in slow retreat,
The fiends of fire from street to street,
Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare,
The dumb defiance of despair.

A sudden impulse thrilled each wire
That signalled round that sea of fire;
Swift words of cheer, warm heart-throbs came;
In tears of pity died the flame!

From East, from West, from South and North,
The messages of hope shot forth,
And, underneath the severing wave,
The world, full-hande...

To the heart of trusting childhood life is all a gilded way,
Wherein a beam of sunny bliss forever seems to play;
It roams about delightedly through pleasure's roseate bower,
And gaily makes a playmate, too, of every bird and flower;
Holds with the rushing of the winds companionship awhile,
And, on the tempest's darkest brow, discerns a brightening smile,
Converses with the babbling waves, as on their way they wend,
And sees, in everything it meets, the features of a friend.
"To-day" is full of rosy joy, "to-morrow" is not here:
When, for an uncreated hour, was childhood known to fear?
Not until hopes, warm hopes, its heart a treasure-house have made,
Like summer flowers to bloom awhile, like them, alas, to fade;
Cherished too fondly and too long, for ah! the rich parterre,
...

Did you see that man riding past,
With shoulders bowed with care?
There’s failure in his eyes to last,
And in his heart despair.
He seldom looks to left or right,
He nods, but speaks to none,
And he’s a man who fought the fight,
God knows how hard!, and won.

No great “review” could rouse him now,
No printed lies could sting;
No kindness smooth his knitted brow,
Nor wrong one new line bring.
Through dull, dumb days and brooding nights,
From years of storm and stress,
He’s riding down from lonely heights,
The Mountains of Success.

He sees across the darkening land
The graveyards on the coasts;
He sees the broken columns stand
Like cold and bitter ghosts;
His world is dead while yet he lives,
Though known in continents;
H...

To the too-dear, to the too-beautiful,
who fills my heart with clarity,
to the angel, to the immortal idol,
All hail, in immortality!

She flows through my reality,
air, mixed with the salt sea-swell:
into my soul’s ecstasy,
pours the essence of the eternal;

Ever-fresh sachet, that scents
the dear corner’s atmospheric light,
hidden smoke, of the burning censer,
in the secret paths of night.

How, incorruptible love,
to express your endless verities?
Grain of musk, unseen, above,
in the depths of my infinities!

To the too-dear, to the too-beautiful,
who is my joy and sanity,
to the angel, to the immortal idol,
All hail in immortality!

Like flowers sequestered from the sun
And wind of summer, day by day
I dwindled paler, whilst my hair
Showed the first tinge of grey.

"Oh, what is life, that we should live?
Or what is death, that we must die?
A bursting bubble is our life:
I also, what am I?"

"What is your grief? now tell me, sweet,
That I may grieve," my sister said;
And stayed a white embroidering hand
And raised a golden head:

Her tresses showed a richer mass,
Her eyes looked softer than my own,
Her figure had a statelier height,
Her voice a tenderer tone.

"Some must be second and not first;
All cannot be the first of all:
Is not this, too, but vanity?
I stumble like to fall.

"So yesterday I read the acts
Of Hector and each clangorous ...

I

Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath.
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night;
The body calls it death,
The heart remorse.
But if these be right
What is joy?


II

A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
And half is half and yet is all the scene;
And half and half consume what they renew,
And he that Attis' image hangs between
That staring fury and the blind lush leaf
May know not what he knows, but knows not grief


III

Get all the gold and silver that you can,
Satisfy ambition, animate
The trivial days and ram them with the sun,
And yet upon t...

Her thoughts are sweet glimpses of heaven,
Her life is that heaven brought down;
Oh, never to mortal was given
So rare and bejewelled a crown!
I'll wear it as saints wear the glory
That radiantly clasps them above -
    Oh, dower most fair!
    Oh, diadem rare!
Bright crown of her maidenly love.

My heart is a fane of devotion,
My feelings are converts at prayer,
And every thrill of emotion
Makes dearer the crown I would wear.
My soul in its fulness of rapture
Begins its millennial reign,
    Life glows like a sun,
    Love's zenith is won,
And Joy is sole monarch again.

My noonday of life is as morning,
God's light streams approvingly down;
Uncovered, I wait her adorning,
She comes with the beautiful crown!
I'll wear i...

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,...

‘Man is blind because of sin;
‘Revelation makes him sure.
‘Without that, who looks within,
‘Looks in vain, for all’s obscure.’

Nay, look closer into man!
Tell me, can you find indeed
Nothing sure, no moral plan
Clear prescribed, without your creed?

‘No, I nothing can perceive;
‘Without that, all’s dark for men.
‘That, or nothing, I believe.’
For God’s sake, believe it then!

Back of each soldier who fights for France,
    Ay, back of each woman and man
Who toils and prays through these long tense days,
    Is the spirit of Great Joan.
For the love she gave, and the life she gave,
    In the eyes of God sufficed
To crown her with light, and power, and might,
    That made her second to Christ.

And so in that hour at the Marne she came,
    To the seeing eyes of men;
And the blind of view still felt and knew
    That her spirit had come again.
And she will come in each crucial hour
    And joy shall follow despair,
For Joan sees her France on its knees
    And she hears the voice of its prayer.

There is no hate in the heart of France,
    But a mighty moral force
That takes its stand for her worshipped land,