ART.

GIVE to barrows, trays and pans
Grace and glimmer of romance;
Bring the moonlight into noon
Hid in gleaming piles of stone;
On the city's paved street

Plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet;
Let spouting fountains cool the air,
Singing in the sun-baked square ;
Let statue, picture, park and hall,
Ballad, flag and festival,

The past restore, the day adorn,
And make to-morrow a new morn.
So shall the drudge in dusty frock
Spy behind the city clock
Retinues of airy kings,

Skirts of angels, starry wings,

His fathers shining in bright fables,
His children fed at heavenly tables.

'Tis the privilege of Art

Thus to play its cheerful part,

Man on earth to acclimate

And bend the exile to his fate,

And, moulded of one element

With the days and firmament,

Teach him on these as stairs to climb, And live on even terms with Time; Whilst upper life the slender rill

Of human sense doth overfill.

236

SPIRITUAL LAWS.- UNITY.

SPIRITUAL LAWS.

THE living Heaven thy prayers respect,
House at once and architect,
Quarrying man's rejected hours,
Builds therewith eternal towers;
Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,

And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,

Makes flame to freeze and ice to boil;
Forging, through swart arms of Offence,
The silver seat of Innocence.

UNITY.

SPACE is ample, east and west,
But two cannot go abreast,

Cannot travel in it two:

Yonder masterful cuckoo

Crowds every egg out of the nest,
Quick or dead, except its own;
A spell is laid on sod and stone,
Night and Day were tampered with,
Every quality and pith

Surcharged and sultry with a power
That works its will on age and hour.

WORSHIP.

THIS is he, who, felled by foes,

Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows:
He to captivity was sold,

But him no prison-bars would hold:
Though they sealed him in a rock,
Mountain chains he can unlock :
Thrown to lions for their meat,
The crouching lion kissed his feet;
Bound to the stake, no flames appalled,
But arched o'er him an honoring vault.
This is he men miscall Fate,
Threading dark ways, arriving late,
But ever coming in time to crown
The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down.
He is the oldest, and best known,

More near than aught thou call'st thy own,

Yet, greeted in another's eyes,

Disconcerts with glad surprise.

This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers,
Floods with blessings unawares.

Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line
Severing rightly his from thine,
Which is human, which divine.

QUATRAINS.

A. H.

HIGH was her heart, and yet was well inclined,
Her manners made of bounty well refined;

Far capitals and marble courts, her eye still seemed

to see,

Minstrels and kings and high-born dames, and of the best that be.

66 SUUM CUIQUE."

WILT thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.

HUSH!

EVERY thought is public,
Every nook is wide;

Thy gossips spread each whisper,
And the gods from side to side.

ORATOR.

HE who has no hands

Perforce must use his tongue;

Foxes are so cunning

Because they are not strong.

ARTIST.

QUIT the hut, frequent the palace,
Reck not what the people say;

For still, where'er the trees grow biggest,
Huntsmen find the easiest way.

POET.

EVER the Poet from the land
Steers his bark and trims his sail;
Right out to sea his courses stand,
New worlds to find in pinnace frail.

POET.

To clothe the fiery thought

In simple words succeeds,
For still the craft of genius is
To mask a king in weeds.

BOTANIST.

Go thou to thy learned task,
I stay with the flowers of spring:
Do thou of the ages ask

What me the hours will bring.

GARDENER.

TRUE Brahmin, in the morning meadows wet, Expound the Vedas of the violet,

Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop, See the plum redden, and the beurré stoop.