Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,

And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,

How weakly understood

Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less

Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,

Thou 'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,

"I will be sorry for their childishness."

THE TWO DESERTS

Not greatly mov'd with awe am I To learn that we may spy

Five thousand firmaments beyond our own. The best that 's known

Of the heavenly bodies does them credit small.

View'd close, the Moon's fair ball

Is of ill objects worst,

A corpse in Night's highway, naked, firescarr'd, accurst;

And now they tell

That the Sun is plainly seen to boil and

burst

Too horribly for hell.

So, judging from these two,

As we must do,

The Universe, outside our living Earth, Was all conceiv'd in the Creator's mirth, Forecasting at the time Man's spirit deep, To make dirt cheap.

Put by the Telescope!

Better without it man may see, Stretch'd awful in the hush'd midnight, The ghost of his eternity.

SAY, did his sisters wonder what could
Joseph see

In a mild, silent little Maid like thee?
And was it awful, in that narrow house,
With God for Babe and Spouse?
Nay, like thy simple, female sort, each one
Apt to find Him in Husband and in Son,
Nothing to thee came strange in this.
Thy wonder was but wondrous bliss:
Wondrous, for, though

True Virgin lives not but does know,
(Howbeit none ever yet confess'd,)
That God lies really in her breast,
Of thine He made His special nest!
And so

All mothers worship little feet,
And kiss the very ground they 've trod ;
But, ah, thy little Baby sweet
Who was indeed thy God!

Beside her, on a table round, inlaid
With precious stones by Roman art de-
sign'd,

Lay phials, scent, a novel and a Bible,
A pill box, and a wine glass, and a book
On the Apocalypse; for she was much
Addicted unto physic and religion,
And her physician had prescrib'd for her
Jellies and wines and cheerful Literature.
The Book on the Apocalypse was writ
By her chosen pastor, and she took the
novel

With the dry sherry, and the pills prescrib'd.

A gorgeous, pious, comfortable life
Of misery she lived; and all the sins

Of all her house, and all the nation's sins,
And all shortcomings of the Church and
State,

And all the sins of all the world beside, Bore as her special cross, confessing them Vicariously day by day, and then

She comforted her heart, which needed it, With bric-a-brac and jelly and old wine.

With just enough of better thought to know

It was not noble, and despise it all,
And most herself for making it her all.
A woman, complex, intricate, involv'd ;
Wrestling with self, yet still by self sub-
dued;

Scorning herself for being what she was,
And yet unable to be that she would;
Uneasy with the sense of possible good
Never attain'd, nor sought, except in fits
Ending in failures; conscious, too, of power
Which found no purpose to direct its force,
And so came back upon herself, and grew
An inward fret. The caged bird some-
times dash'd

Against the wires, and sometimes sat and pin'd,

But mainly peck'd her sugar, and eyed her glass,

And trill'd her graver thoughts away in

Nor hate, nor anything except a name. Yet both were of the world; and she not least

Whose world was the religious one, and stretch'd

A kind of isthmus 'tween the Devil and God,

A slimy, oozy mud, where mandrakes grew, Ghastly, with intertwisted roots, and things Amphibious haunted, and the leathern bat Flicker'd about its twilight evermore.

THE SELF-EXILED

THERE came a soul to the gate of Heaven
Gliding slow-

A soul that was ransom'd and forgiven,
And white as snow:
And the angels all were silent.

A mystic light beam'd from the face
Of the radiant maid,
But there also lay on its tender grace
A mystic shade :

And the angels all were silent.

"How could I touch the golden harps, When all my praise

Would be so wrought with grief-full warps Of their sad days?"

And the angels all were silent.

"How love the lov'd who are sorrowing,
And yet be glad?

How sing the songs ye are fain to sing,
While I am sad?"

And the angels all were silent.

"Oh, clear as glass is the golden street
Of the city fair,

And the tree of life it maketh sweet
The lightsome air: "
And the angels all were silent.

"And the white-rob'd saints with their crowns and palms

Are good to see,

And oh, so grand are the sounding psalms! But not for me :

He dies: he leaves the deed or name,
A gift forever to his land,

In trust to Friendship's prudent hand, Round 'gainst all adverse shocks to guard his fame,

Or to the world proclaim.

But the imperfect thing or thought, The crudities and yeast of youth, The dubious doubt, the twilight truth, The work that for the passing day was wrought,

The schemes that came to nought,

The sketch half-way 'twixt verse and prose

That mocks the finish'd picture true, The quarry whence the statue grew, The scaffolding 'neath which the palace rose, The vague abortive throes

And fever-fits of joy or gloom :

In kind oblivion let them be!

Nor has the dead worse foe than he Who rakes these sweepings of the artist's room,

And piles them on his tomb.

Ah, 't is but little that the best,

Frail children of a fleeting hour, Can leave of perfect fruit or flower! Ah, let all else be graciously supprest When man lies down to rest!

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

1845

GENTLE and grave, in simple dress,
And features by keen mountain air
Moulded to solemn ruggedness,
The man we came to see sat there:
Not apt for speech, nor quickly stirr'd
Unless when heart to heart replied;
A bearing equally remov'd
From vain display or sullen pride.

The sinewy frame yet spoke of one
Known to the hillsides: on his head
Some five-and-seventy winters gone
Their crown of perfect white had shed:-
As snow-tipp'd summits toward the sun
In calm of lonely radiance press,
Touch'd by the broadening light of death
With a serener pensiveness.

O crown of venerable age!
O brighter crown of well-spent years!
The bard, the patriot, and the sage,
The heart that never bow'd to fears!
That was an age of soaring souls;
Yet none with a more liberal scope
Survey'd the sphere of human things;
None with such manliness of hope.

Others, perchance, as keenly felt,
As musically sang as he;
To Nature as devoutly knelt,
Or toil'd to serve humanity :
But none with those ethereal notes,
That star-like sweep of self-control;
The insight into worlds unseen,
The lucid sanity of soul.

The fever of our fretful life,
The autumn poison of the air,
The soul with its own self at strife,
He saw and felt, but could not share :
With eye made clear by pureness, pierced
The life of Man and Nature through;
And read the heart of common things,
Till new seem'd old, and old was new.