Two savings of the Holy Scriptures beat
Like pulses in the Church's brow and breast;
And by them we find rest in our unrest
And, heart deep in salt-tears, do yet entreat
God's fellowship as if on heavenly seat.
The first is Jesus wept, whereon is prest
Full many a sobbing face that drops its best
And sweetest waters on the record sweet:
And one is where the Christ, denied and scorned
Looked upon Peter. Oh, to render plain
By help of having loved a little and mourned,
That look of sovran love and sovran pain
Which He, who could not sin yet suffered, turned
On him who could reject but not sustain!

    It's a mighty good world, so it is, dear lass,
    When even the worst is said.
    There's a smile and a tear, a sigh and a cheer,
    But better be living than dead;
    A joy and a pain, a loss and a gain;
    There's honey and may be some gall:
    Yet still I declare, foul weather or fair,
    It's a mighty good world after all.

    For look, lass! at night when I break from the fight,
    My Kingdom's awaiting for me;
    There's comfort and rest, and the warmth of your breast,
    And little ones climbing my knee.
    There's fire-light and song - Oh, the world may be wrong!
    Its empires may topple and fall:
    My home is my care - if gladness be there,
    It's a mighty good world after all.

    O heart of pure gold! I have made you...

The days of a man are threescore years and ten.
The days of his life were half a man's, whom we
Lament, and would yet not bid him back, to be
Partaker of all the woes and ways of men.
Life sent him enough of sorrow: not again
Would anguish of love, beholding him set free,
Bring back the beloved to suffer life and see
No light but the fire of grief that scathed him then.
We know not at all: we hope, and do not fear.
We shall not again behold him, late so near,
Who now from afar above, with eyes alight
And spirit enkindled, haply toward us here
Looks down unforgetful yet of days like night
And love that has yet his sightless face in sight.

I
TRANSFIGURATION

But half a man's days, and his days were nights.
What hearts were ours who loved him, sho...

Cities and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth
The Cities rise again.

This season's Daffodil,
She never hears
What change, what chance, what chill,
Cut down last year's;
But with bold countenance,
And knowledge small,
Esteems her seven days' continuance,
To be perpetual.

So Time that is o'er-kind
To all that be,
Ordains us e'en as blind,
As bold as she:
That in our very death,
And burial sure,
Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
"See how our works endure!"

How can we find? how can we rest? how can
We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man?
We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate,
Who love the unloving and lover hate,
Forget the moment ere the moment slips,
Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips,
Who want, and know not what we want, and cry
With crooked mouths for Heaven, and throw it by.
Love's for completeness! No perfection grows
'Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose,
And joint, and socket; but unsatisfied
Sprawling desires, shapeless, perverse, denied.
Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape,
Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape,
Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed,
Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost
By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways
From sanity and fr...

Through the world which the Spirit creative and kind
First formed out of chaos, I fly like the wind,
    Until on the strand
    Of its billows I land,
My anchor cast forth where the breeze blows no more,
And Creation's last boundary stands on the shore.
I saw infant stars into being arise,
For thousands of years to roll on through the skies;
    I saw them in play
    Seek their goal far away,
For a moment my fugitive gaze wandered on,
I looked round me, and lo! all those bright stars had flown!

Madly yearning to reach the dark kingdom of night.
I boldly steer on with the speed of the light;
    All misty and drear
    The dim heavens appear,
While embryo systems and seas at their source
Are whirling around the sun-wanderer's course.

Whe...

Peace be around thee, wherever thou rov'st;
    May life be for thee one summer's day,
And all that thou wishest and all that thou lov'st
    Come smiling around thy sunny way!
If sorrow e'er this calm should break,
    May even thy tears pass off so lightly,
Like spring-showers, they'll only make
    The smiles, that follow shine more brightly.

May Time who sheds his blight o'er all
    And daily dooms some joy to death
O'er thee let years so gently fall,
    They shall not crush one flower beneath.
As half in shade and half in sun
    This world along its path advances.
May that side the sun's upon
    Be all that e'er shall meet thy glances!

When by Jabbok the patriarch waited
    To learn on the morrow his doom,
And his dubious spirit debated
    In darkness and silence and gloom,
    There descended a Being with whom
He wrestled in agony sore,
    With striving of heart and of brawn,
And not for an instant forbore
    Till the east gave a threat of the dawn;
And then, as the Awful One blessed him,
    To his lips and his spirit there came,
Compelled by the doubts that oppressed him,
The cry that through questioning ages
Has been wrung from the hinds and the sages,
    "Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name!"

Most fatal, most futile, of questions!
    Wherever the heart of man beats,
    In the spirit's most sacred retreats,
It comes with its sombre suggestions,
    Unanswered for e...

If to Tradition faith be due,
And echoes from old verse speak true,
Ere the meek Saint, Columba, bore
Glad tidings to Iona's shore,
No common light of nature blessed
The mountain region of the west,
A land where gentle manners ruled
O'er men in dauntless virtues schooled,
That raised, for centuries, a bar
Impervious to the tide of war;
Yet peaceful Arts did entrance gain
Where haughty Force had striven in vain,
And, 'mid the works of skilful hands,
By wanderers brought from foreign lands
And various climes, was not unknown
The clasp that fixed the Roman Gown;
The Fibula, whose shape, I ween,
Still in the Highland Broach is seen,
Worn at the breast of some grave Dame
On road or path, or at the door
Of fern-thatched Hut on heathy moor:
B...

Ite, caldi sospiri, al freddo core.

HE IMPLORES MERCY OR DEATH.


    Go, my warm sighs, go to that frozen breast,
Burst the firm ice, that charity denies;
And, if a mortal prayer can reach the skies,
Let death or pity give my sorrows rest!
Go, softest thoughts! Be all you know express'd
Of that unnoticed by her lovely eyes,
Though fate and cruelty against me rise,
Error at least and hope shall be repress'd.
Tell her, though fully you can never tell,
That, while her days calm and serenely flow,
In darkness and anxiety I dwell;
Love guides your flight, my thoughts securely go,
Fortune may change, and all may yet be well;
If my sun's aspect not deceives my woe.

CHARLEMONT.


    Go, burning sighs, to her cold bosom go,...

Hold to the rapture: let it work
Inward till founts of being fill,
And all is clear that once was murk,
And Beauty's self rise, mirrored still,
Before the mind, that shall devise
New forms of earth to realize.

Let it possess the heart and soul,
And through the two evolve the one,
And so achieve th' immortal goal
Of something great that man has done:
Pouring his thought, his dream intense,
Into the molds of permanence.

Within the compass of extremes
Science and Art their worlds have set,
Wherein the soul fulfills its dreams,
And evermore, without a let,
Swift, eagle-like, free, unconfined,
Soars to new altitudes of mind.

O fond anxiety of mortal men!
How vain and inconclusive arguments
Are those, which make thee beat thy wings below
For statues one, and one for aphorisms
Was hunting; this the priesthood follow'd, that
By force or sophistry aspir'd to rule;
To rob another, and another sought
By civil business wealth; one moiling lay
Tangled in net of sensual delight,
And one to witless indolence resign'd;
What time from all these empty things escap'd,
With Beatrice, I thus gloriously
Was rais'd aloft, and made the guest of heav'n.

They of the circle to that point, each one.
Where erst it was, had turn'd; and steady glow'd,
As candle in his socket. Then within
The lustre, that erewhile bespake me, smiling
With merer gladness, heard I thus begin:

"E'en as hi...

    I knew a little boy, not very long ago,
    Who was as bright and happy as any boy you know.
    He had an only fault, and you will all agree
    That from a fault like this a boy himself might free.

    "I wonder who is there, oh, see! now, why is this?"
    And "Oh, where are they going?" and "Tell me what it is?"
    Ah! "which" and "why" and "who," and "what" and "where" and "when,"
    We often wished that never need we hear those words again.

    He seldom stopped to think; he almost always knew
    The answer to the questions that around the world he threw.
    To children seeking knowledge a quick reply we give,
    But answering what he asked was pouring water through a sieve.
    Yet you'll admit his fate was as sad as it was strange.
    Our eyes w...

The Grey Brethren





Some of the happiest remembrances of my childhood are of days spent in a little Quaker colony on a high hill.

The walk was in itself a preparation, for the hill was long and steep and at the mercy of the north-east wind; but at the top, sheltered by a copse and a few tall trees, stood a small house, reached by a flagged pathway skirting one side of a bright trim garden.

I, with my seven summers of lonely, delicate childhood, felt, when I gently closed the gate behind me, that I shut myself into Peace. The house was always somewhat dark, and there were no domestic sounds. The two old ladies, sisters, both born in the last century, sat in the cool, dim parlour, netting or sewing. Rebecca was small, with a nut-cracker nose and chin; Mary, tall and dignified, needed no...

Hurrah! the seaward breezes
Sweep down the bay amain;
Heave up, my lads, the anchor!
Run up the sail again!
Leave to the lubber landsmen
The rail-car and the steed;
The stars of heaven shall guide us,
The breath of heaven shall speed.
From the hill-top looks the steeple,
And the lighthouse from the sand;
And the scattered pines are waving
Their farewell from the land.
One glance, my lads, behind us,
For the homes we leave one sigh,
Ere we take the change and chances
Of the ocean and the sky.
Now, brothers, for the icebergs
Of frozen Labrador,
Floating spectral in the moonshine,
Along the low, black shore!
Where like snow the gannet's feathers
On Brador's rocks are shed,
And the noisy murr are flying,
Like black scuds, overhea...

Let Honour speak, for only Honour can
End nobly what in nobleness began.
Nor hate nor anger may, though just their cause,
This strife prolong, if Honour whisper, Pause!
Let Honour speak.
For Honour keeps the ashes of the dead,
Accounts the anguish of all widowhead,
All childlessness, all sacrifice, defeat,
And all our dead have died for, though to live was sweet.
Let Honour speak,
Nor weariness nor weakness murmur, Stay!
Nor for this Now England's To be betray.
All else be dumb, for only Honour can
End nobly what in nobleness began.

(for Gerry)


When May has spent its little song,
And richer comes the June,
Through former eyes the heart will long
For May again in tune;
Though large with promise hope may be,
By future visions cast,
Our memoried thoughts will yearn to see
The happy little past.

And you, my loyal little friend,
(From May to June you go),
What years of loyalty attend
Great comradeship we know;
Yet joy have me in place of tears
To see your road depart,
For whether east or west your years,
A friend stays home at heart.

Then gladly let the Springtime pass
And Summer in its wake;
Ahead are fields of flower and grass
All fragrant for your sake:
With hearts of joy we say farewell,
With laughter, wave and nod,
It's always May...

Too frail to soar - a feeble thing -
It fell to earth with fluttering wing;
But God, who watches over all,
Beheld that little sparrow's fall.

'Twas not a bird with plumage gay,
Filling the air with its morning lay;
'Twas not an eagle bold and strong,
Borne on the tempest's wing along.


Only a brown and weesome thing,
With drooping head and listless wing;
It could not drift beyond His sight
Who marshals the splendid stars of night.

Its dying chirp fell on His ears,
Who tunes the music of the spheres,
Who hears the hungry lion's call,
And spreads a table for us all.

Its mission of song at last is done,
No more will it greet the rising sun;
That tiny bird has found a rest
More calm than its mother's downy breast