To God, who sees me here dismayed,
By reason of that debt unpaid;
And knows (as I know, too, alas !)

The opportunities let pass

So carelessly, wherein I could
Have turned my evil into good.

Now, though I sought them tearfully,

They never can return to me;
And neither penitence nor prayer
That one injustice can repair. '
Its shadow will surround me yet,
And many a pang of vain regret
And haunting memory will belong
To this irreparable wrong.

Robert Brownmy

ABT VOGLER.

(After he has been extemporizing upon the musical instrument
of his invention.)

I.

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,

Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed

Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim,

Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,

Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

II.

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine, This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!

Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,

Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!

And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,
Burrow a while and build, broad on the roots of things,
Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

III.

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion

he was,

Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a

crest,

Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,

Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest; For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,

When a great illumination surprises a festal night— Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire) Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.

IV.

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match

man's birth,

Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;

And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach

the earth,

As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the

sky:

Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine, Not a point nor a peak but found, but fixed its wandering

star;

Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine, For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near

nor far.

V.

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,

Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast, Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow, Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at

last;

Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body

and gone,

But were back once morc to breathe in an old world worth

their new:

What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon; say, matched both? for I was made

And what is, shall

perfect too.

VI.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,

All through my soul that praised as my wish flowed visibly

forth,

All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole, Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder

worth ;

Had I written the same, made verse-still, effect proceeds from

cause,

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;

It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,

Painter and poet are proud, in the artist-list enrolled :

VII.

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,

Existent behind all laws, that made them, and, lo, they are!

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a

star.

Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught;
It is everywhere in the world-loud, soft, and all is said:
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought,
And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the
head!

VIII.

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared:

Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too

slow;

For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared, That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go. Never to be again! But many more of the kind

As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me? To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.

IX.

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name? Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands! What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same? Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?

There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as

before;

The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;

What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good

more;

On the earth, the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round,