(Yet though life's logic grow as gray As thou, my soul's not in eclipse.)

Cold Cloud, but yesterday

Thy lightning slew a child at play,

And then a priest with prayers upon his lips

For his enemies, and then a bright

Lady that did but ope the door

Upon the storming night

To let a beggar in,-strange spite,-
And then thy sulky rain refused to pour

Till thy quick torch a barn had burned
Where twelve months' store of victual lay,
A widow's sons had earned;

Which done, thy floods with winds returned,—
The river raped their little herd away.

What myriad righteous errands high
Thy flames might run on! In that hour

Thou slewest the child, oh why

Not rather slay Calamity,

Breeder of Pain and Doubt, infernal Power?

Or why not plunge thy blades about
Some maggot politician throng

Swarming to parcel out

The body of a land, and rout

The maw-conventicle, and ungorge Wrong?

What the cloud doeth

The Lord knoweth,

The cloud knoweth not.
What the artist doeth,
The Lord knoweth;

Knoweth the artist not?

Well-answered!-O dear artists, ye
-Whether in forms of curve or hue
Or tone your gospels be—

Say wrong This work is not of me,
But God: it is not true, it is not true.

Awful is Art because 'tis free.
The artist trembles o'er his plan
Where men his Self must see.

Who made a song or picture, he
Did it, and not another, God nor man.

My Lord is large, my Lord is strong:
Giving, He gave my me is mine.

How poor, how strange, how wrong,
To dream He wrote the little song

I made to Him with love's unforced design!

Oh, not as clouds dim laws have plann'd
To strike down Good and fight for Ill,-

Oh, not as harps that stand

In the wind and sound the wind's command: Each artist-gift of terror !-owns his will.

For thee, Cloud,—if thou spend thine all
Upon the South's o'er-brimming sea

That needs thee not; or crawl

To the dry provinces, and fall

Till every convert clod shall give to thee

Green worship; if thou grow or fade,

Bring on delight or misery,

Fly east or west, be made

Snow, hail, rain, wind, grass, rose, light, shade What matters it to thee? There is no thee.

Pass, kinsman Cloud, now fair and mild :
Discharge the will that's not thine own.
I work in freedom wild,

But work, as plays a little child,

Sure of the Father, Self, and Love, alone.

BALTIMORE, 1878-9.

III.

MARSH SONG-AT SUNSET.

OVER the monstrous shambling sea,

Over the Caliban sea,

Bright Ariel-cloud, thou lingerest:

Oh wait, oh wait, in the warm red West,-
Thy Prospero I'll be.

Over the humped and fishy sea,

Over the Caliban sea

O cloud in the West, like a thought in the heart
Of pardon, loose thy wing, and start,

And do a grace for me.

Over the huge and huddling sea,

Over the Caliban sea,

Bring hither my brother Antonio,-Man,—

My injurer: night breaks the ban :

Brother, I pardon thee.

BALTIMORE, 1879-80.

IV.

THE MARSHES OF GLYNN.

GLOOMS of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,-
Emerald twilights,—

Virginal shy lights,

Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green colon

nades

Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,

Of the heavenly woods and glades,

That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn ;-

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,-
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,

Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of

leaves,

Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that

grieves,

Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good ;

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did

shine

Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine;

But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,—

Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the

oak,

And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke

Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn

Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of

yore

When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitter

ness sore,

And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,—

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face

The vast sweet visage of space.

To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,

Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, For a mete and a mark

To the forest-dark :

So:

Affable live-oak, leaning low,—

Thus with your favor-soft, with a reverent hand,
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!)
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand

On the firm-packed sand,

Free

By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.