URIEL. Ir fell in the ancient periods Which the brooding soul surveys, Or ever the wild Time coined itself This was the lapse of Uriel, Which in Paradise befell. Once, among the Pleiads walking, SAID overheard the young gods talking; And the treason, too long pent, To his ears was evident. The young deities discussed Laws of form, and metre just, One, with low tones that decide, Against the being of a line. The stern old war-gods shook their heads; Seemed to the holy festival The rash word boded ill to all; A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell On the beauty of Uriel; In heaven once eminent, the god Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud; Or by knowledge grown too bright Stole over the celestial kind, If in ashes the fire-seed slept. But now and then, truth-speaking things And, shrilling from the solar course, And the gods shook, they knew not why. THE WORLD-SOUL. THANKS to the morning light, Thanks to the foaming sea, To the uplands of New-Hampshire, To the boy with his games undaunted, Cities of proud hotels, Houses of rich and great, Vice nestles in your chambers, Beneath your roofs of slate. It cannot conquer folly, Time-and-space-conquering steam, And the light-outspeeding telegraph Bears nothing on its beam. The politics are base; The letters do not cheer; And 'tis far in the deeps of history, The voice that speaketh clear. Trade and the streets ensnare us, Our bodies are weak and worn; We plot and corrupt each other, Yet there in the parlor sits Some figure of noble guise, Our angel, in a stranger's form, Or woman's pleading eyes; Or only a flashing sunbeam In at the window-pane ; Or Music pours on mortals Its beautiful disdain. |