Aye, on the stone lips of old, on the clay of to-day, Tranquil, inscrutable, sweet with a quiet disdain, Lingers the Smile of All-Wisdom, still seeming to say, "Fret not, O Friend, at the turmoil-it passeth away; Waste not the Now in the search of a Then that is vain :

"Hushed in the infinite dusk at the end shall ye be, Feverish, questioning spirits that travail and yearn, Quenched in the fulness of knowledge and peaceful as

we:

Lo, we have lifted the veil-there was nothing to see! Lo, we have looked on the scroll-there was nothing to learn!"

The Song of Songs.

THE dawn-wind sighs through the trees, and a blackbird, waking,

Sings in a dream to me of dreams and the dying Spring,

Calls from the darkened heart of the wood over light leaves shaking,

Calls from deep hollows of night where the grey dews cling.

Soul of the dawn! Dear voice, O fount pellucid and golden!

Triumph and hope and despair meet in your magical flow;

Better than all things seen, and best of the unbeholden, Song of the strange things known that we shall not know.

Yours not the silent months, the splendid burden of Summer,

Dark with the pomp of leaves and heavy with flowers full blown,

Spring and the Dawn are your kingdoms, O Spring's first-comer,

Lordship and largesse of Youth, they are all your

own.

Song of songs, and joy of joys, and sorrow of sorrows, Now in a distant forest of dream, and now in mine

ear,

Who would take thought of eld, or the shadow of songless morrows,

Who would say "Youth is past" while you keep faith with the year?

The Unknown God.

WHEN, overarched by gorgeous night,
I wave my trivial self away;
When all I was to all men's sight
Shares the erasure of the day;
Then do I cast my cumbering load,
Then do I gain a sense of God.

Not him that with fantastic boasts

A sombre people dreamed they knew;

The mere barbaric God of Hosts

That edged their sword and braced their thew: A God they pitted 'gainst a swarm

Of neighbour Gods less vast of arm;

A God like some imperious king,
Wroth, were his realm not duly awed;

A God for ever hearkening

Unto his self-commanded laud;

A God for ever jealous grown
Of carven wood and graven stone;

A God whose ghost, in arch and aisle,
Yet haunts his temple-and his tomb;
But follows in a little while

Odin and Zeus to equal doom;
A God of kindred seed and line;
Man's giant shadow, hailed divine.

O streaming worlds, O crowded sky,

O Life, and mine own soul's abyss, Myself am scarce so small that I Should bow to Deity like this! This my Begetter? This was what Man in his violent youth begot.

The God I know of, I shall ne'er

Know, though he dwells exceeding nigh.
Raise thou the stone and find me there,
Cleave thou the wood and there am I.
Yea, in my flesh his spirit doth flow,
Too near, too far, for me to know.
Whate'er my deeds, I am not sure
That I can pleasure him or vex :
I that must use a speech so poor
It narrows the Supreme with sex.
Notes he the good or ill in man?
To hope he cares is all I can.

I hope with fear. For did I trust
This vision granted me at birth,
The sire of heaven would seem less just
Than many a faulty son of earth.
And so he seems indeed! But then,
I trust it not, this bounded ken.

And dreaming much, I never dare

To dream that in my prisoned soul

The flutter of a trembling prayer

Can move the Mind that is the Whole. Though kneeling nations watch and yearn, Does the primordial purpose turn?