HIM strong Genius urged to roam,
Stronger Custom brought him home.

THOU shalt make thy house

The temple of a nation's vows.

Spirits of a higher strain

Who sought thee once shall seek again.

I detected many a god

Forth already on the road,
Ancestors of beauty come

In thy breast to make a home.

As the drop feeds its fated flower,

As finds its Alp the snowy shower,
Child of the omnific Need,

Hurled into life to do a deed,

Man drinks the water, drinks the light.

EVER the Rock of Ages melts

Into the mineral air,

To be the quarry whence to build
Thought and its mansions fair.

YES, sometimes to the sorrow-stricken
Shall his own sorrow seem impertinent,

A thing that takes no more root in the world
Than doth the traveller's shadow on the rock.

THE archangel Hope

Looks to the azure cope,

Waits through dark ages for the morn, Defeated day by day, but unto victory born.

BUT if thou do thy best,

Without remission, without rest,

And invite the sun-beam,

And abhor to feign or seem

Even to those who thee should love

And thy behavior approve;

If thou go in thine own likeness,
Be it health, or be it sickness;
If thou go as thy father's son,
If thou wear no mask or lie,
Dealing purely and nakedly,

*

FROM the stores of eldest matter,
The deep-eyed flame, obedient water,

Transparent air, all-feeding earth,

He took the flower of all their worth,
And, best with best in sweet consent,
Combined a new temperament.

ASCENDING thorough just degrees
To a consummate holiness,

As angel blind to trespass done,

And bleaching all souls like the sun.

THE bard and mystic held me for their own,
I filled the dream of sad, poetic maids,
I took the friendly noble by the hand,
I was the trustee of the hand-cart man,

The brother of the fisher, porter, swain,

And these from the crowd's edge well pleased beheld The service done to me as done to them.

WITH the key of the secret he marches faster,

From strength to strength, and for night brings day;

While classes or tribes, too weak to master
The flowing conditions of life, give way.

Он what is Heaven but the fellowship

Of minds that each can stand against the world
By its own meek and incorruptible will?

THAT each should in his house abide,
Therefore was the world so wide.

IF curses be the wage of love,
Hide in thy skies, thou fruitless Jove,
Not to be named:

It is clear

Why the gods will not appear;

They are ashamed.

WHEN wrath and terror changed Jove's regal port And the rash-leaping thunderbolt fell short.

THE BOHEMIAN HYMN.

IN many forms we try

To utter God's infinity,

But the boundless hath no form,

And the Universal Friend

Doth as far transcend

An angel as a worm.

The great Idea baffles wit,
Language falters under it,

It leaves the learned in the lurch;

Nor art, nor power, nor toil can find
The measure of the eternal Mind,
Nor hymn, nor prayer, nor church.

PRAYER.

WHEN success exalts thy lot
God for thy virtue lays a plot.
And all thy life is for thy own,
Then for mankind's instruction shown;
And though thy knees were never bent,
To Heaven thy hourly prayers are sent,
And whether formed for good or ill
Are registered and answered still.

GRACE.

How much, preventing God, how much I owe
To the defences thou hast round me set;
Example, custom, fear, occasion slow,
These scorned bondmen were my parapet.
I dare not peep over this parapet

To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below, The depths of sin to which I had descended, Had not these me against myself defended.