Discolored hair, and smouldering eyes that lie
Sunk in their sockets, glaring hot and dry.

Slowly he raised his voice-once rich in tone
Like sweetest music, now a mournful knell
With dull sepulchral sounds, as of a stone
Cast down into a black unfathomed well-
And murmured, 'Lo, I come back from the grave,
Behold, there is no God to smite or save.

'Poor fools! wild dreamers! No, there is no God; Yon heaven is deaf and dumb to prayer and praise;

Lo, no almighty tyrant wields the rod

For evermore above our hapless race;

Nor fashioned us, frail creatures that we be,

To bear the burden of eternity.

'Hear it, self-torturing monks, and cease to wage Your mad, delirious, suicidal war;

There is no devil who from age to age

Waylays and tempts all souls of men that are;

For ever seeking whom he may devour,

And damn with wine and woman, gold and power.

'Deluded priests, ye think the world a snare,
Denouncing every tender human tie!
Behold, your heaven is unsubstantial air,
Your future bliss a sick brain's phantasy;
There is no room amid the stars which gem
The firmament for your Jerusalem.

'Rejoice, poor sinners, for I come to tell
To you who hardly dare to live for fright;
There is no burning everlasting hell

Where souls shall be tormented day and night:
The fever ye call life ends with your breath;
All weary souls set in the night of death.

'Then let your life on earth be life indeed!
Nor drop the substance, snatching at a shade!
Ye can have Eden here! ye bear the seed
Of all the hells and heavens and gods ye made
Within that mighty world-transforming thought
Which permeates the universe it wrought-

'Wrought out of stones and plants and birds and beasts, To flower in man, and know itself at last: Around, about you, see what endless feasts The spring and summer bountifully cast! "A vale of tears," ye cry — if ye were wise, The earth itself would change to Paradise.

'The earth itself— the old despised earth,
Would render back your love a thousandfold,
Nor yet afflict the sons of men with dearth,
Disease, and misery, and drought and cold;
If you would seek a blessing in her sod,
Instead of crying vainly on your God.

'Cast down the crucifix, take up the plough!
Nor waste your breath which is the life in prayer!

Dare to be men, and break your impious vow,

Nor fly from woman as the devil's snare!

For if within, around, beneath, above
There is a living God, that God is Love.'

'The fool says in his heart, There is no God,'
Cried St. Columba, white with Christian ire.
'Seize Oran, re-inter him in the sod

And may his soul awake in endless fire:

Earth on his mouth the earth he would adore,
That his blaspheming tongue may blab no more.'

Then like swart ravens swooping on their prey
These monks rushed upon Oran; when there came

One gliding towards them in wild disarray
With hair that streamed behind her like a flame
And face dazed with the moon, who shrilly cried,
'Let not death part the bridegroom from his bride.'

But deeming her some fiend in female guise,
They drive her forth with threats, till, crazed with fear,
Across the stones and mounded graves she flies
Towards that lapping, moon-illumined mere;
And like a child seeking its mother's breast
She casts her life thereon, and is at rest.

And while the waves close gurgling o'er her head,
A grave is dug whence he may never stray,
Or come back prophesying from the dead, —

All shouting as they stifle him with clay :

'Earth on his mouth- the earth he would adore, That his blaspheming tongue may blab no more.'

THE STREET-CHILDREN'S DANCE.

Now the earth in fields and hills
Stirs with pulses of the Spring,
Nest-embowering hedges ring
With interminable trills;

Sunlight runs a race with rain,
All the world grows young again.

Young as at the hour of birth :
From the grass the daisies rise
With the dew upon their eyes,
Sun-awakened eyes of earth;
Fields are set with cups of gold;
Can this budding world grow old?

Can the world grow old and sere,
Now when ruddy-tasselled trees

Stoop to every passing breeze,
Rustling in their silken gear;

Now when blossoms pink and white
Have their own terrestrial light?

Brooding light falls soft and warm,
Where in many a wind-rocked nest,
Curled up 'neath the she-bird's breast,
Clustering eggs are hid from harm;
While the mellow-throated thrush
Warbles in the purpling bush.

Misty purple bathes the Spring;
Swallows flashing here and there
Float and dive on waves of air,
And make love upon the wing;
Crocus-buds in sheaths of gold
Burst like sunbeams from the mould.

Chestnut leaflets burst their buds,
Perching tiptoe on each spray,
Springing towards the radiant day,
As the bland, pacific floods

Of the generative sun

All the teeming earth o'errun.

Can this earth run o'er with beauty,
Laugh through leaf and flower and grain,
While in close-pent court and lane,
In the air so thick and sooty,
Little ones pace to and fro,
Weighted with their parents' woe?

Woe-predestined little ones!
Putting forth their buds of life
In an atmosphere of strife,

And crime breeding ignorance;

Where the bitter surge of care
Freezes to a dull despair.

Dull despair and misery

Lie about them from their birth;

Ugly curses, uglier mirth,
Are their earliest lullaby;

Fathers have they without name,

Mothers crushed by want and shame.

Brutish, overburthened mothers,
With their hungry children cast
Half-nude to the nipping blast;
Little sisters with their brothers
Dragging in their arms all day
Children nigh as big as they.

Children mothered by the street:
Shouting, flouting, roaring after
Passers-by with gibes and laughter,
Diving between horses' feet,
In and out of drays and barrows,
Recklessly, like London sparrows.

Mudlarks of our slums and alleys,
All unconscious of the blooming
World behind those housetops looming,
Of the happy fields and valleys,
Of the miracle of Spring
With its boundless blossoming.

Blossoms of humanity!

Poor soiled blossoms in the dust!
Through the thick defiling crust
Of soul-stifling poverty,

In your features may be traced
Childhood's beauty half-effaced —