By what astrology of fear or hope Dare I to cast thy horoscope! Like the new moon thy life appears; A little strip of silver light,
And widening outward into night The shadowy disk of future years; And yet upon its outer rim,
A luminous circle, faint and dim, And scarcely visible to us here, Rounds and completes the perfect sphere; A prophecy and intimation,
A pale and feeble adumbration,
Of the great world of light, that lies Behind all human destinies.
Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught, Should be to wet the dusty soil
With the hot tears and sweat of toil,— To struggle with imperious thought, Until the overburdened brain, Weary with labour, faint with pain, Like a jarred pendulum, retain Only its motion, not its power,- Remember, in that perilous hour, When most afflicted and oppressed, From labour there shall come forth rest.
And if a more auspicious fate On thy advancing steps await, Still let it ever be thy pride To linger by the labourer's side; With words of sympathy or song To cheer the dreary march along Of the great army of the poor, O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous moor. Nor to thyself the task shall be Without reward; for thou shalt learn The wisdom early to discern True beauty in utility;
As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith's door, And hearing the hammers, as they smote The anvils with a different note, Stole from the varying tones, that hung Vibrant on every iron tongue, The secret of the sounding wire, And formed the seven-chorded lyre.
Enough! I will not play the Seer; I will no longer strive to ope The mystic volume, where appear The herald Hope, forerunning Fear, And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope. Thy destiny remains untold; For, like Acestes' shaft of old, The swift thought kindles as it flies, And burns to ashes in the skies.
I SAW, as in a dream sublime, The balance in the hand of Time.
O'er East and West its beam impended; And day, with all its hours of light, Was slowly sinking out of sight, While, opposite, the scale of night Silently with the stars ascended.
Like the astrologers of eld, In that bright vision I beheld Greater and deeper mysteries. I saw, with its celestial keys, Its chords of air, its frets of fire, The Samian's great Æolian lyre, Rising through all its sevenfold bars, From earth unto the fixèd stars.
And through the dewy atmosphere, Not only could I see, but hear, Its wondrous and harmonious strings, Its sweet vibration, sphere by sphere, From Dian's circle light and near, Onward to vaster and wider rings, Where, chanting through his beard of snows, Majestic, mournful, Saturn goes, And down the sunless realms of space Reverberates the thunder of his bass.
Beneath the sky's triumphal arch This music sounded like a march, And with its chorus seemed to be Preluding some great tragedy. Sirius was rising in the east ; And, slow ascending one by one, The kindling constellations shone. Begirt with many a blazing star, Stood the great giant Algebar, Orion, hunter of the beast!
His sword hung gleaming by his side. And, on his arm, the lion's hide Scattered across the midnight air The golden radiance of its hair.
The moon was pallid, but not faint, And beautiful as some fair saint, Serenely moving on her way In hours of trial and dismay. As if she heard the voice of God, Unharmed with naked feet she trod Upon the hot and burning stars, As on the glowing coals and bars That were to prove her strength, and try Her holiness and her purity.
Thus moving on, with silent pace, And triumph in her sweet, pale face, She reached the station of Orion.
Aghast he stood in strange alarm! And suddenly from its outstretched arm Down fell the red skin of the lion Into the river at his feet.
His mighty club no longer beat The forehead of the bull; but he Reeled as of yore beside the sea, When, blinded by Enopion,
He sought the blacksmith at his forge, And, climbing up the mountain gorge, Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun.
Then, through the silence overhead, An angel with a trumpet said, "For evermore, for evermore, The reign of violence is o'er!" And like an instrument that flings Its music on another's strings, The trumpet of the angel cast Upon the heavenly lyre its blast, And on from sphere to sphere the words Re-echoed down the burning chords,- "For evermore, for evermore, The reign of violence is o'er !"
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs !
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window pane It pours and pours; And swift and wide, With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars The rain, the welcome rain!
The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.
From the neighbouring school
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise
And commotion;
And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Engulfs them in its whirling And turbulent ocean.
In the country, on every side
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain How welcome is the rain!
In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand; Lifting the yoke-encumbered head, With their dilated nostrils spread, They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
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