Reluctant. Hush! beyond all depth away The heat lies silent at the brink of day: Now the hand trails upon the viol-string That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing,

I HAVE been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell : I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell,

stray

shore.

Time's self it is, made audible, The murmur of the earth's own shell. Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea's end: our sight may pass No furlong further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's, it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Gray and not known, along its path.

HUMANITY

THERE is a soul above the soul of each,

A mightier soul, which yet to each belongs:

There is a sound made of all human speech,

And numerous as the concourse of all songs:

And in that soul lives each, in each that

soul,

Though all the ages are its lifetime vast; Each soul that dies, in its most sacred

whole

Receiveth life that shall forever last.
And thus forever with a wider span
Humanity o'erarches time and death;
Man can elect the universal man,

And live in life that ends not with his breath:

And gather glory that increases still Till Time his glass with Death's last dust shall fill.

FROM "MANO: A POETICAL HISTORY"

THE SKYLARK

THOU only bird that singest as thou flyest, Heaven-mounting lark, that measurest

with thy wing

The airy zones, till thou art lost in highest ! Upon the branch the laughing thrushes cling,

About her home the humble linnet wheels, Around the tower the gather'd starlings swing;

These mix their songs and weave their figur'd reels:

Thou risest in thy lonely joy away, From the first rapturous note that from thee steals,

Quick, quick, and quicker, till the exalted lay

Is steadied in the golden breadths of light, 'Mid mildest clouds that bid thy pinions stay.

The heavens that give would yet sustain thy flight,

And o'er the earth for ever cast thy voice, If but to gain were still to keep the height. But soon thou sinkest on the fluttering

poise

Of the same wings that soar'd: soon ceasest thou

The song that grew invisible with joys.

Love bids thy fall begin; and thou art now Dropp'd back to earth, and of the earth again,

Because that love hath made thy heart to bow.

Thou hast thy mate, thy nest on lowly plain,

Thy timid heart by law ineffable

Is drawn from the high heavens where thou shouldst reign;

Earth summons thee by her most tender spell;

For thee there is a silence and a song : Thy silence in the shadowy earth must dwell,

Thy song in the bright heavens cannot be