Path-finder, road-builder,

Mediator, royal giver;

Rightly seeing, rightly seen,

Of joyful and transparent mien.

"Tis a sparkle passing

From each to each, from thee to me,

To and fro perpetually ;

Sharing all, daring all,

Levelling, displacing

Each obstruction, it unites

Equals remote, and seeming opposites. And ever and forever Love

Delights to build a road:

Unheeded Danger near him strides,
Love laughs, and on a lion rides.
But Cupid wears another face,
Born into Dæmons less divine:
His roses bleach apace,

His nectar smacks of wine.
The Dæmon ever builds a wall,
Himself encloses and includes,
Solitude in solitudes :

In like sort his love doth fall.

He doth elect

The beautiful and fortunate,
And the sons of intellect,
And the souls of ample fate,
Who the Future's gates unbar, -
Minions of the Morning Star.
In his prowess he exults,
And the multitude insults.

His impatient looks devour

Oft the humble and the poor;
And, seeing his eye glare,
They drop their few pale flowers,
Gathered with hope to please,
Along the mountain towers,
Lose courage, and despair.
He will never be gainsaid, -
Pitiless, will not be stayed;
His hot tyranny

Burns up every other tie.

Therefore comes an hour from Jove

Which his ruthless will defies,

And the dogs of Fate unties.

Shiver the palaces of glass;

Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls,

Where in bright Art each god and sibyl dwelt

Secure as in the zodiac's belt;

And the galleries and halls,

Wherein every siren sung,

Like a meteor pass.

For this fortune wanted root
In the core of God's abysm,
Was a weed of self and schism;
And ever the Dæmonic love
Is the ancestor of wars,
And the parent of remorse.

III.

THE CELESTIAL LOVE.

BUT God said,

'I will have a purer gift;

There is smoke in the flame;

New flowerets bring, new prayers uplift, And love without a name.

Ye shall climb on the heavenly stair,
And selfish preference forbear;
And in right deserving,

And without a swerving

Each from your proper state

Weave roses for your mate.'

Deep, deep are loving eyes,
Flowed with naphtha fiery sweet;
And the point is Paradise

Where their glances meet;

Their reach shall yet be more profound,

And a vision without bound;

The axis of those eyes sun-clear
Be the axis of the sphere:
So shall the lights ye pour amain
Go, without check or intervals,

Through from the empyrean walls
Unto the same again.

Higher far into the pure realm,
Over sun and star,

Over the flickering Dæmon film,
Thou must mount for love;
Into vision where all form
In one only form dissolves;
In a region where the wheel
On which all beings ride

Visibly revolves;

Where the starred eternal worm

Girds the world with bound and term; Where unlike things are like;

Where good and ill,

And joy and moan,

Melt into one.

There Past, Present, Future shoot

Triple blossoms from one root;
Substances at base divided

In their summits are united;
There the holy essence rolls,
One through separated souls;
And the sunny on sleeps
Folding Nature in its deeps
And every fair and every good,
Known in part, or known impure,
To men below,

In their archetypes endure.
The race of gods,

Or those we erring own,

Are shadows flitting up and down
In the still abodes.

The circles of that sea are laws

Which publish and which hide the cause.

Pray for a beam

Out of that sphere,

Thee to guide and to redeem.

O, what a load

Of care and toil,

By lying use bestowed,

From his shoulders falls who sees

The true astronomy,

The period of peace.

Counsel which the ages kept
Shall the well-born soul accept.
As the overhanging trees

Fill the lake with images,

As garment draws the garment's hem,
Men their fortunes bring with them.

By right or wrong,

Lands and goods go to the strong.

Property will brutely draw

Still to the proprietor;

Silver to silver creep and wind,

And kind to kind.

Nor less the eternal poles
Of tendency distribute souls.
There need no vows to bind