The good, the bad with equal zeal,
He asked, he only asked, to feel.
Timid, self-pleasing, sensitive,

With Gods, with fools, content to live.
Bended to fops who bent to him;
Surface with surfaces did swim.

'Sorrow, sorrow!' the angels cried,
'Is this dear Nature's manly pride?
Call hither thy mortal enemy,
Make him glad thy fall to see
Yon waterflag, yon sighing osier,
A drop can shake, a breath can fan;
Maidens laugh and weep; Composure
Is the pudency of man.'

Again by night the poet went
From the lighted halls

Beneath the darkling firmament

To the seashore, to the old seawalls,

Forth paced a star beneath the cloud, The constellation glittered soon,

"You have no lapse; so have ye glowed But once in your dominion.

And yet, dear stars, I know ye shine
Only by needs and loves of mine;
Light-loving, light-asking life in me
Feeds those eternal lamps I see.
And I to whom your light has spoken,
I, pining to be one of you,

I fall, my faith is broken,

Ye scorn me from your deeps of blue. Or if perchance, ye orbs of Fate,

Your ne'er averted glance
Beams with a will compassionate

On sons of time and chance,

Then clothe these hands with power
In just proportion,

Nor plant immense designs

Where equal means are none.'

CHORUS OF SPIRITS.

Means, dear brother, ask them not;
Soul's desire is means enow,

Pure content is angel's lot,

Thine own theatre art thou.

Gentler far than falls the snow
In the woodwalks still and low
Fell the lesson on his heart

And woke the fear lest angels part.

POET.

I see your forms with deep content,

I know that ye are excellent,

But will ye stay?

I hear the rustle of wings,

Ye meditate what to say

Ere ye go to quit me for ever and aye.

SPIRITS.

Brother, we are no phantom band;

Brother, accept this fatal hand.

Aches thine unbelieving heart
With. the fear that we must part?
See, all we are rooted here

By one thought to one same sphere;
From thyself thou canst not flee, —
From thyself no more can we.

POET.

Suns and stars their courses keep,
But not angels of the deep:

Day and night their turn observe,
But the day of day may swerve.
Is there warrant that the waves
Of thought in their mysterious caves
Will heap in me their highest tide,
In me therewith beatified?

Unsure the ebb and flood of thought,

The moon comes back,

the Spirit not

SPIRITS.

Brother, sweeter is the Law

Than all the grace Love ever saw;
We are its suppliants. By it, we
Draw the breath of Eternity;
Serve thou it not for daily bread,
Serve it for pain and fear and need.
Love it, though it hide its light;
By love behold the sun at night.
If the Law should thee forget,
More enamoured serve it yet;
Though it hate thee, suffer long;
Put the Spirit in the wrong;

Brother, no decrepitude

Chills the limbs of Time;

As fleet his feet, his hands as good,
His vision as sublime:

On Nature's wheels there is no rust;
Nor less on man's enchanted dust
Beauty and Force alight.

FRAGMENTS ON THE POET AND THE POETIC GIFT.1

I.

THERE are beggars in Iran and Araby,

SAID was hungrier than all;

Hafiz said he was a fly

That came to every festival.

He came a pilgrim to the Mosque

On trail of camel and caravan,
Knew every temple and kiosk
Out from Mecca to Ispahan;
Northward he went to the snowy hills,
At court he sat in the grave Divan.
His music was the south-wind's sigh,
His lamp, the maiden's downcast eye,
And ever the spell of beauty came
And turned the drowsy world to flame.
By lake and stream and gleaming hall
And modest copse and the forest tall,

1 The poem "Beauty," the motto for the Essay bearing that name, was originally part of this poem.

Where'er he went, the magic guide

Kept its place by the poet's side.

Said melted the days like cups of pearl,
Served high and low, the lord and the churl,
Loved harebells nodding on a rock,

A cabin hung with curling smoke,
Ring of axe or hum of wheel

Or gleam which use can paint on steel,
And huts and tents; nor loved he less
Stately lords in palaces,

Princely women hard to please,

Fenced by form and ceremony,

Decked by courtly rites and dress

And etiquette of gentilesse.

But when the mate of the snow and wind,

He left each civil scale behind:

Him wood-gods fed with honey wild

And of his memory beguiled.

He loved to watch and wake

When the wing of the south-wind whipt the lake And the glassy surface in ripples brake

And fled in pretty frowns away

Like the flitting boreal lights,
Rippling roses in northern nights,
Or like the thrill of Æolian strings
In which the sudden wind-god rings.
In caves and hollow trees he crept
And near the wolf and panther slept.
He came to the green ocean's brim
And saw the wheeling sea-birds skim,
Summer and winter, o'er the wave,
Like creatures of a skiey mould,
Impassible to heat or cold.