He led me to her and let me speak,
And kiss her eyes and her lips and cheek.
(And I ride alone in the sunny morn,
In the quivering beechen shadows.)

How am I wrong in adoring her,
So pretty she is, and dear, and fair?

(Tira-la-la on my bugle horn!)

And what other song can I sing to-day?—
With her scarf in my helm for the great tourney,
Riding out in the sultry morn

By folds and fields and meadows.

A Psalm in Autumn.

SET to thy seal that God is true.

Of all His words what word has failed?

Has He not watched thee hitherto,

And in thy danger brought thee through,

Though feet have slipped and heart has quailed?

Hast thou not seen how He provides
The raven's gift, the robin's fare?
Canst thou not trust, whate'er betides,
Though hope be faint and scorn derides,

What thou hast shared thou still shalt share?

And peering blindly through the dark,
Adown the dim, uncharted road,
What if there shine no single spark
In all the thickening gloom ?-for hark!
The wings of those that wait on God!

Fate.

HIGH in the spaces of sky
Reigns inaccessible Fate:
Yields she to prayer or to cry?
Answers she early or late?

Change and re-birth and decay,
Dawning and darkness and light—
Creatures they are of a day,

Lost in a pitiless night.

Men are like children who play
Unknown by an unknown sea:
Centuries vanish away—

She waits the eternal She.

Nay, but the gods are afraid

Of the hoary Mother's nod;
They are of things that are made,
She the original God.

They have seen dynasties fall
In ruin of what has been:

Her no upheavals appal-
Silent, unmoved and serene.

Silent, unmoved and serene,
Reigns in a world uncreate,
Eldest of Gods and their Queen,
Featureless, passionless Fate.

Hereafter.

οὖλος ὁρᾶ, οὖλος δὲ νοει οὖλος δὲ τ ̓ ἀκούει.

XENOPHANES.

"There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest."-ECCLESIASTES ix. 10.

I WAIT for thee, beloved: and my heart,

Merged in the ocean of infinitude

Wherein all thoughts and hopes and passions brood

In dreamful slumber mid a world apart,

Dreams of that mortal sphere, where still thou art ;
There rings no human speech, no human mood
Stirs, where the All in frozen solitude
Plays on a boundless stage his awful part.

Yet if thou camest where the unmoving main
Breaks with no sound upon its ice-girt shore,

I think thy love, changing the changeless scene, Might spread in widening circles, more and more, Might waken passion's cry for what had been, And fire the ancient pulse of joy and pain.

Death.

GRIEF, and the ache of things that pass and fade,
The stately pomp, the pall, the open grave,
These and the solemn thoughts which cannot

Our

save

eyes from tears, nor make us less afraid Of that dread mystery which God has made:

How many thousand thousand men who wave
Speechless farewells, with hearts forlornly brave,

Know well the mockery of Death's parade?

This cannot help us to transgress the bounds,
Nor give us wings to overpass the steep

Ramparts of Heaven which God's angels keep: Wide is the "great gulf fixed": for us the mounds Of fresh-turned earth; above, sweet peace surrounds The painless patience of eternal sleep.