"And is this," mused I, "all ye earned, | He thinks how happy is my arm 'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled "And who were they," I mused, "that Through pathless wilds, with labor long, Out clanged the Ave Mary bells, To make it possible that thou Shouldst here with brother sinners bow. Thoughts that great hearts once broke Breathe cheaply in the common air; Henceforth, when rings the health to Who live in story and in song, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. My coachman, in the moonlight there, I hear him with his brethren swear, Flattening his nose against the pane, He sees me in to supper go, A silken wonder by my side, And wishes me some dreadful harm, Meanwhile I inly curse the bore And envy him, outside the door, In golden quiets of the moon. The winter wind is not so cold As the bright smile he sees me win, I envy him the ungyved prance By which his freezing feet he warns, And drag my lady's-chains and dance The galley-slave of dreary forms. O, could he have my share of din, And I his quiet!-past a doubt 'T would still be one man bored within, And just another bored without. GODMINSTER CHIMES. WRITTEN IN AID OF A CHIME OF BELLS Whether 't was dreamed or heard; And builds of half-remembered things Through aisles of long-drawn centuries Which God's own pity wrought; That throbs with praise and prayer. And all the way from Calvary down crown And safe in God repose; That all paths to the Father lead Where Self the feet have spurned. And, as the mystic aisles I pace, By aureoled workmen built, Lives ending at the Cross I trace Alike through grace and guilt; One Mary bathes the blessed feet With ointment from her eyes, With spikenard one, and both are sweet, For both are sacrifice. Moravian hymn and Roman chant Of Him, the inmost friend; One prayer soars cleansed with martyr fire, One choked with sinner's tears, In heaven both meet in one desire, And God one music hears. Whilst thus I dream, the bells clash out Upon the Sabbath air, Each seems a hostile faith to shout, A selfish form of prayer; My dream is shattered, yet who knows But in that heaven so near These discords find harmonious close In God's atoning ear? The figure of a woman veiled, that said, "My name is Duty, turn and follow me"; Something there was that chilled me in her voice; I felt Youth's hand grow slack and cold in mine, As if to be withdrawn, and I replied: "O, leave the hot wild heart within my breast! Duty comes soon enough, too soon comes Death; This slippery globe of life whirls of itself, Hasting our youth away into the dark; These senses, quivering with electric heats, Too soon will show, like nests on wintry boughs Obtrusive emptiness, too palpable wreck, Which whistling north-winds line with downy snow Sometimes, or fringe with foliaged rime, Thither the singing birds no more rein vain, turn." I only felt the hand within my own, Transmuting all my blood to golden fire, Dissolving all my brain in throbbing mist. Suddenly shrank the hand; suddenly burst A cry that split the torpor of my brain, And as the first sharp thrust of lightning loosens From the heaped cloud its rain, loosened my sense: "Save me!" it thrilled; "O, hide me! there is Death! Death the divider, the unmerciful, And covers Beauty up in the cold ground; Horrible Death! bringer of endless dark; Let him not see me! hide me in thy breast!" Thereat I strove to clasp her, but my arms Met only what slipped crumbling down, and fell, A handful of gray ashes, at my feet. I would have fled, I would have followed back That pleasant path we came, but all was changed; Rocky the way, abrupt, and hard to find; Yet I toiled on, and, toiling on, I thought, "That way lies Youth, and Wisdom, and all Good; For only by unlearning Wisdom comes And climbing backward to diviner Youth; What the world teaches profits to the world, What the soul teaches profits to the soul, Which then first stands erect with Godward face, When she lets fall her pack of withered facts, The gleanings of the outward eye and ear, And looks and listens with her finer sense; Nor Truth nor Knowledge cometh from without." After long weary days I stood again And waited at the Parting of the Ways; Again the figure of a woman veiled Where Hunger reaped the unattainable grain, Where Idleness enforced saw idle lands, Leagues of unpeopled soil, the common earth, Walled round with paper against God and Man. "I cannot look," I groaned, "at only these ; The heart grows hardened with perpetual wont, And palters with a feigned necessity, The Form replied: "Men follow Duty, never overtake; Duty nor lifts her veil nor looks behind." But, as she spake, a loosened lock of hair Slipped from beneath her hood, and I, who looked To see it gray and thin, saw amplest gold; Not that dull metal dug from sordid earth, But such as the retiring sunset flood Leaves heaped on bays and capes of island cloud. "O Guide divine," I prayed, "although not yet I may repair the virtue which I feel Gone out at touch of untuned things and foul With draughts of Beauty, yet declare how soon!" "Faithless and faint of heart," the voice returned, "Thou see'st no beauty save thou make it first; Man, Woman, Nature, each is but a glass Where the soul sees the image of herself, Visible echoes, offsprings of herself. But, since thou need'st assurance of how | Since last, dear friend, I clasped your soon, Wait till that angel comes who opens all, The reconciler, he who lifts the veil, The reuniter, the rest-bringer, Death." I waited, and methought he came; but how, Or in what shape, I doubted, for no sign, By touch or mark, he gave me as he passed: Only I knew a lily that I held Snapt short below the head and shriv. elled up; Then turned my Guide and looked at me unveiled, And I beheld no face of matron stern, But that enchantment I had followed erst, Only more fair, more clear to eye and brain, Heightened and chastened by a household charm; She smiled, and "Which is fairer," said her eyes, "The hag's unreal Florimel or mine?" ALADDIN. WHEN I was a beggarly boy, But I had Aladdin's lamp; When I could not sleep for cold, I had fire enough in my brain, And builded, with roofs of gold, My beautiful castles in Spain ! Since then I have toiled day and night, I have money and power good store, But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright, For the one that is mine no more; Take, Fortune, whatever you choose, You gave, and may snatch again; I have nothing't would pain me to lose, For I own no more castles in Spain ! AN INVITATION. NINE years have slipt like hour-glass sand From life's still-emptying globe away, hand, And stood upon the impoverished land, I held the token which you gave, The old worn world of hurry and heat, The young, fresh world of thought and scope, While you, where beckoning billows fleet Climb far sky-beaches still and sweet, You sought the new world in the old, He needs no ship to cross the tide, Whatever moulds of various brain Come back our ancient walks to tread, Dear haunts of lost or scattered friends, Old Harvard's scholar-factories red, Where song and smoke and laughter sped The nights to proctor-haunted ends. Constant are all our former loves, Unchanged the icehouse-girdled pond, Its hemlock glooms, its shadowy coves, Where floats the coot and never moves, Its slopes of long-tamed green beyond. Our old familiars are not laid, Though snapt our wands and sunk our books; They beckon, not to be gainsaid, Where, round broad meads that mowers wade, The Charles his steel-blue sickle crooks. |