XXIV.

AND was the day of my delight

As pure and perfect as I say?

The very source and fount of Day Is dash'd with wandering isles of night.

If all was good and fair we met,

This earth had been the Paradise

It never look'd to human eyes

Since Adam left his garden yet.

And is it that the haze of grief

Makes former gladness loom so great?

The lowness of the present state, That sets the past in this relief?

Or that the past will always win
A glory from its being far ;
And orb into the perfect star

We saw not, when we moved therein ?

XXV.

I KNOW that this was Life,-the track
Whereon with equal feet we fared;
And then, as now, the day prepared
The daily burden for the back.

But this it was that made me move
As light as carrier-birds in air;
I loved the weight I had to bear,
Because it needed help of Love:

Nor could I weary, heart or limb,

When mighty Love would cleave in twain

The lading of a single pain,

And part it, giving half to him.

XXVI.

STILL onward winds the dreary way;
I with it; for I long to prove

No lapse of moons can canker Love, Whatever fickle tongues may say.

And if that eye which watches guilt

And goodness, and hath power to see Within the green the moulder'd tree, And towers fall'n as soon as built

Oh, if indeed that eye foresee

Or see (in Him is no before)
In more of life true life no more,
And Love the indifference to be,

So might I find, ere yet the morn

Breaks hither over Indian seas, That Shadow waiting with the keys, To cloak me from my proper scorn.

The captive void of noble rage,

The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes

His license in the field of time,

Unfetter'd by the sense of crime, To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,

The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth, Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

XXVIII.

THE time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.

Four voices of four hamlets round,

From far and near, on mead and moor,

Swell out and fail, as if a door

Were shut between me and the sound:

Each voice four changes on the wind,

That now dilate, and now decrease, Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace, Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.

This

year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish'd no more to wake,
And that
my I hold on life would break

Before I heard those bells again: