Mine held them once; I flung away

Those keys that might have open set The golden sluices of the day,

But clutch the keys of darkness yet ;I hear the reapers singing go

Into God's harvest; I, that might With them have chosen, here below

Grope shuddering at the gates of night.

O glorious Youth, that once wast mine!

O high Ideal! all in vain

Ye enter at this ruined shrine

Whence worship ne'er shall rise again;

The bat and owl inhabit here,

The snake nests in the altar-stone,

The sacred vessels moulder near,

The image of the God is gone.

THE OAK.

WHAT gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, is his! There needs no crown to mark the forest's king; How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss!

Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring, Which he with such benignant royalty

Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent;

All nature seems his vassal proud to be,
And cunning only for his ornament.

How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows,
An unquelled exile from the summer's throne,
Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly shows,

Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are flown!

His boughs make music of the winter air,
Jewelled with sleet, like some cathedral front
Where clinging snow-flakes with quaint art repair
The dents and furrows of Time's envious brunt.

How doth his patient strength the rude March wind Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer breeze,

And win the soil, that fain would be unkind,

To swell his revenues with proud increase!
He is the gem; and all the landscape wide
(So doth his grandeur isolate the sense)
Seems but the setting, worthless all beside,
An empty socket, were he fallen thence.

So, from oft converse with life's wintry gales,
Should man learn how to clasp with tougher roots

The inspiring earth; - how otherwise avails
The leaf-creating sap that sunward shoots ?
So every year that falls with noiseless flake
Should fill old scars up on the stormward side,
And make hoar age revered for age's sake,
Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride.

i

So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate,

True hearts compel the sap of sturdier growth, So between earth and heaven stand simply great, That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal

Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will;

As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel,

And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock him still.

Lord! all thy works are lessons,

each contains

Some emblem of man's all-containing soul; Shall he make fruitless all thy glorious pains, Delving within thy grace an eyeless mole? Make me the least of thy Dodona-grove,

Cause me some message of thy truth to bring, Speak but a word through me, nor let thy love

Among my boughs disdain to perch and sing.

THE ROYAL PEDIGREE.

LET those who will claim gentle birth,
And take their pride in Norman blood,
The purest ancestry on earth

Must find its spring in Adam's mud;
And all, though noble now or base,
From the same level took their rise,
And, side by side, in loving grace,
Leaped, crystal-clear, from Paradise.

We are no spawn of bartered love,

That 's welded to the heart with gold,

Put on as lightly as a glove,

As lightly doffed, scarce three days old,