The Lethe of nature

Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the perfect, Which his eyes seek in vain.

To insight profounder

Man's spirit must dive;

His aye-rolling orbit

At no goal will arrive;

The heavens that now draw him

With sweetness untold,

Once found,

for new heavens

He spurneth the old.

'Pride ruined the angels,

Their shame them restores; And the joy that is sweetest Lurks in stings of remorse.

Have I a lover

Who is noble and free?

I would he were nobler
Than to love me.

'Eterne alternation

Now follows, now flies; And under pain, pleasure, Under pleasure, pain lies. Love works at the centre,

Heart-heaving alway;

Forth speed the strong pulses

To the borders of day.

'Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits:

Thy sight is growing blear;

Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx,-
Her muddy eyes to clear!'-
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,-

Said, 'Who taught thee me to name?

I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow,

Of thine eye I am eyebeam.

'Thou art the unanswered question; Couldst see thy proper eye,

Alway it asketh, asketh;

And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply.'

Uprose the merry Sphinx,

And crouched no more in stone;
She melted into purple cloud,
She silvered in the moon;

She spired into a yellow flame;
She flowered in blossoms red;
She flowed into a foaming wave;
She stood Monadnoc's head.

Thorough a thousand voices

Spoke the universal dame:

'Who telleth one of my meanings, Is master of all I am.'

EACH AND ALL.

LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon

Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;

Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it cheers not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky;-
He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,

With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar. The lover watched his graceful maid,

As mid the virgin train she strayed,

Nor knew her beauty's best attire

Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;
The gay enchantment was undone,

A gentle wife, but fairy none.

Then I said, "I covet truth;

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth.".
As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;

I inhaled the violet's breath;

Around me stood the oaks and firs;

Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;

Over me soared the eternal sky,

Full of light and of deity;

Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird;-
Beauty through my senses stole;

I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

THE PROBLEM.

I LIKE a church; I like a cowl;
I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowled churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought,
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;

Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,
The canticles of love and woe;
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,

Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew;

The conscious stone to beauty grew.