And weary with infirmity. But Man

Has fear and hope and phantasy and awe,
And wistful yearnings and unsated loves,
That strain beyond the limits of his life,

And therefore Gods and Demons, Heaven and Hell:
This Man, the admirable, the pitiable.

Lo, I look backward some few thousand years,
And see men hewing temples in my rocks
With seated forms gigantic fronting them,
And solemn labyrinthine catacombs

With tombs all pictured with fair scenes of life
And scenes and symbols of mysterious death;
And planting avenues of sphinxes forth,
Sphinxes couched calm, whose passionless regard
Sets timeless riddles to bewildered time,
Forth from my sacred banks to other fanes
Islanded in the boundless sea of air,

Upon whose walls and colonnades are carved
Tremendous hieroglyphs of secret things;
I see embalming of the bodies dead
And judging of the disembodied souls;
I see the sacred animals alive,

And statues of the various-headed gods,
Among them throned a woman and a babe,
The goddess crescent-horned, the babe divine.
Then I flow forward some few thousand years,
And see new temples shining with all grace,
Whose sculptured gods are beautiful human forms.
Then I flow forward not a thousand years,
And see again a woman and a babe,
The woman haloed and the babe divine;
And everywhere that symbol of the cross
I knew aforetime in the ancient days,
The emblem then of life, but now of death.
Then I flow forward some few hundred years,

And see again the crescent, now supreme
On lofty cupolas and minarets

Whence voices sweet and solemn call to prayer.
So the men change along my changeless stream,
And change their faiths; but I yield all alike
Sweet water for their drinking, sweet as wine,
And pure sweet water for their lustral rites:
For thirty generations of my corn
Outlast a generation of my men,
And thirty generations of my men
Outlast a generation of their gods:
O admirable, pitiable Man,

My child yet alien in my family.

And I through all these generations flow
Of corn and men and gods, all-bountiful,
Perennial through their transientness, still fed
By earth with waters in abundancy;

And as I flowed here long before they were,
So may I flow when they no longer are,

Most like the serpent of eternity :

Blessèd for ever be our Mother Earth.

FROM SUNDAY UP THE RIVER.'9

II.

'O, WHAT are you waiting for here? young man ! What are you looking for over the bridge?

A little straw hat with the streaming blue ribbons

Is soon to come dancing over the bridge.

Her heart beats the measure that keeps her feet dancing,

Dancing along like a wave o' the sea;

Her heart pours the sunshine with which her eyes glancing Light up strange faces, in looking for me.

The strange faces brighten in meeting her glances; The strangers all bless her, pure, lovely, and free; She fancies she walks, but her walk skips and dances, Her heart makes such music in coming to me.

O, thousands and thousands of happy young maidens Are tripping this morning their sweethearts to see: But none whose heart beats to a sweeter love-cadence Than hers who will brighten the sunshine for me.

'O what are you waiting for here? young man !
What are you looking for over the bridge? —'
A little straw hat with the streaming blue ribbons.
– And here it comes dancing over the bridge.

ALFRED AUSTIN.

HYMN TO DEATH.

WHAT is it haunts the summer air?
A sense of something lately passed away;
Something pleasant, something fair,

That was with us yesterday,

And is no longer there.

Now from the pasture comes no baby bleat,
Nor the frisk of frolic feet

There is seen.

Blossom and bloom have spread their wings, and flown, And the bosks and orchards green

The rosy flush of childhood have outgrown.

Lapwing and linnet and lark have fledged their brood;

Mavis and merle have gotten their desire;

The nightingale begins to tire;

Even the cuckoo's note hath fitful grown;

And in the closing leafage of the wood
The ringdove now is left to coo alone.

Then revel in your roses, reckless June!
Revel and ripen swift to your decay.
But your turn will follow soon,

And the rounding harvest-moon

Avenge the too brief innocence of May. Yet once again there scents the morning air The soul of something passed away;

Something precious, something fair,

That was breathing yesterday, And is no longer there.

It is Autumn, dying, dying,

With her leaves around her lying,

And Winter, beggared heir, unprofitably sighing.

Let her die.

Unto us as unto her

Earth is but a sepulchre,

And the over-arching sky

Neither asks nor wonders why
Those who here are left behind
Season sweet and spacious mind
Fain would save;

Yet with pale visages and streaming tears
Must watch the harvest of the ripened years
Locked in the bootless granary of the grave.

Why do you call me hence?

To purge what fault, to punish what offence?
Had I maligned my lot,

Or ever once the privilege forgot

Of being, through the spirit's inward sense,
Mirror and measure of all things that are,
Then it were right, were just,

That, like a falling leaf or failing star,

my

The winds of Heaven should blow about
Or had I used the years as waifs and strays,
To build myself a comfortable nest,
Groped life for golden garbage, like the rest,
And, as a lacquey, on the public ways
For private profit hired out my tongue,
Then against death 't were vain to plead,
Then, then 't were meet indeed

I should grow silenced, like a bell unrung.
But bear me witness, every Spring that came

dust.