Ebb and Flow

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THE MAGIC MIRROR

THE Magic Mirror makes not nor unmakes,
Charms none to sleep nor any from sleep wakes;
It only giveth back the thing it takes.

It is the heart's own cheer that makes it glad,
And one's own bitterness will drive him mad;
It needeth not that other help be had.

The Mirror maketh none to rise or fall;

To him that hath not doth no portion call;
To him that hath is freely given all.

They see themselves who look in Fortune's face;
Unto the sad is sadness Heaven's grace,

And to the souls that love is love's embrace.

Henry Mills Alden [1836

EBB AND FLOW

I WALKED beside the evening sea,

And dreamed a dream that could not be;
The waves that plunged along the shore
Said only-"Dreamer, dream no more!"

But still the legions charged the beach;
Loud rang their battle-cry, like speech;
But changed was the imperial strain:
It murmured-"Dreamer, dream again!"

I homeward turned from out the gloom,—
That sound I heard not in my room;
But suddenly a sound, that stirred
Within my very breast, I heard.

It was my heart, that like a sea
Within my breast beat ceaselessly:
But like the waves along the shore,

It said "Dream on!" and "Dream no more!"
George William Curtis [1824-1892)

THE KING OF DREAMS

SOME must delve when the dawn is nigh;
Some must toil when the noonday beams;
But when night comes, and the soft winds sigh,
Every man is a King of Dreams!

One must plod while another must ply

At plow or loom till the sunset streams,

But when night comes, and the moon rides high,
Every man is a King of Dreams!

One is slave to a master's cry,

Another serf to a despot seems,

But when night comes, and the discords die,
Every man is a King of Dreams!

This you may sell and that may buy,

And this you may barter for gold that gleams,
But there's one domain that is fixed for aye,—

Every man is a King of Dreams!

Clinton Scollard [1860

MASQUERADE

WE dance with proud and smiling lips,

With frank, appealing eyes, with shy hands clinging.

We sing, and few will question if there slips

A sob into our singing.

Each has a certain step to learn;

Our prisoned feet move staidly in set places,
And to and fro we pass, since life is stern,
Patiently with masked faces.

Olive Custance [18

THE HIGHER PANTHEISM

THE sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains

Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?

While the Days Go By

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Is not the Vision he? though He be not that which He

seems?

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?

Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why;
For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel "I am I"?

Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom, Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor and gloom.

Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can

meet

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice,
For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice.

Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool;
For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool;

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot

see;

But if we could see and hear, this Vision-were it not He? Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892]

WHILE THE DAYS GO BY

I SHALL not say, our life is all in vain,

For

peace may cheer the desolated hearth;
But well I know that, on this weary earth,
Round each joy-island is a sea of pain—
And the days go by.

We watch our hopes, far flickering in the night,
Once radiant torches, lighted in our youth,

To guide, through years, to some broad morn of truth;
But these go out and leave us with no light-
And the days go by.

We see the clouds of summer go and come,
And thirsty verdure praying them to give:
We cry, "O Nature, tell us why we live!"
She smiles with beauty, but her lips are dumb-
And the days go by.

Yet what are we? We breathe, we love, we cease:
Too soon our little orbits change and fall:

We are Fate's children, very tired; and all
Are homeless strangers, craving rest and peace—
And the days go by.

I only ask to drink experience deep;
And, in the sad, sweet goblet of my years,

To find love poured with all its smiles and tears,
And quaffing this, I too shall sweetly sleep-
While the days go by.

Henry Abbey [1842–191 1]

THE WAYFARER

I WILL reach far down in the pit of sorrow
And gather song,

With the bitter past I will deck to-morrow.

I will turn no cowardly look behind me,

But still fare on

Till the glow of ultimate joy shall blind me.

For I ask no blessing and no forgiving,

The gain was mine,

Since I learn from all things the truth of living.

As I lay asleep in Italy.-SHELLEY

ONE night I lay asleep in Africa,

In a closed garden by the city gate;

A desert horseman, furious and late,

Came wildly thundering at the massive bar,

Life

"Open in Allah's name! Wake, Mustapha!
Slain is the Sultan,-treason, war, and hate
Rage from Fez to Tetuan! Open straight."
The watchman heard as thunder from afar:
"Go to! In peace this city lies asleep;
To all-knowing Allah 'tis no news you bring;"
Then turned in slumber still his watch to keep.
At once a nightingale began to sing,

In oriental calm the garden lay,—

Panic and war postponed another day.

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Charles Dudley Warner [1829-1900]

INTO THE TWILIGHT

OUT-WORN heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the gray twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is always young,
Dew ever shining and twilight gray;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the gray twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

William Butler Yeats [1865

LIFE

WHEN I consider Life and its few years

A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;
A call to battle, and the battle done
Ere the last echo dies within our ears;