I.

POEMS.

POEMS.

THE SPHINX.

THE Sphinx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled:
Her ear is heavy,

She broods on the world. "Who 'll tell me my secret,

The ages have kept?

I awaited the seer

While they slumbered and slept:

"The fate of the man-child,

The mearing of man; Known fruit of the unknown;

Dædalian plan;

Out of sleeping a waking,

Out of waking a sleep; Life death overtaking; Deep underneath deep?

"Erect as a sunbeam,
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
Undaunted and calm ;

In beautiful motion

The thrush plies his wings; Kind leaves of his covert,

Your silence he sings.

"The waves, unashamed,
In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
Old playfellows meet;
The journeying atoms,
Primordial wholes,

Firmly draw, firmly drive,
By their animate poles.

"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence, Plant, quadruped, bird, By one music enchanted,

One deity stirred, —
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still;

Night veileth the morning,
The vapor the hill.

"But man crouches and blushes, Absconds and conceals;

He creepeth and peepeth,
He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,

Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
He poisons the ground.

"Out spoke the great mother,
Beholding his fear;

At the sound of her accents
Cold shuddered the sphere:
'Who has drugged my boy's cup?
Who has mixed my boy's bread?
Who, with sadness and madness,
Has turned my child's head?'"

I heard a poet answer

Aloud and cheerfully,

"Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges

Are pleasant songs to me.

Deep love lieth under

These pictures of time;

They fade in the light of

Their meaning sublime.

"The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of Nature

Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,

Which his eyes seek in vain.