All subtle thought, all curious fears,
Borne down by gladness so complete,
She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet
With costly spikenard and with tears.

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,
Whose loves in higher love endure;
What souls possess themselves so pure,
Or is there blessedness like theirs?

XCV

O THOU that after toil and storm
Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,

Nor cares to fix itself to form,

Leave thou thy sister when she prays,

Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse

A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith thro' form is pure as thine,

Her hands are quicker unto good:
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev'n for want of such a type.

XCVI

THO' truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin ;

For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,

Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale

Shall enter in at lowly doors.

And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought

Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.

XCVII

COULD we forget the widow'd hour
And look on Spirits breathed away,
As on a maiden in the day

When first she wears her orange-flower!

When crown'd with blessing she doth rise
To take her latest leave of home,

And hopes and light regrets that come

Make April of her tender eyes;

And doubtful joys the father move,
And tears are on the mother's face,
As parting with a long embrace

She enters other realms of love;

Her office there to rear, to teach,
Becoming as is meet and fit

A link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each;

And, doubtless, unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruit
In those great offices that suit
The full-grown energies of heaven.

Ay me, the difference I discern!

How often shall her old fireside
Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride,

How often she herself return,

And tell them all they would have told,
And bring her babe, and make her boast,
Till even those that miss'd her most.
Shall count new things as dear as old :

But thou and I have shaken hands,

Till growing winters lay me low; My paths are in the fields I know, And thine in undiscover'd lands.

XCVIII

BE near me when my light is low,

When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,

And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame

Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,

And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,

And men the flies of latter spring,

That lay their eggs, and sting and sing

And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,

To point the term of human strife, And on the low dark verge of life The twilight of eternal day.

XCIX

Do we indeed desire the dead

Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide?

No inner vileness that we dread?

Shall he for whose applause I strove,

I had such reverence for his blame, See with clear eye some hidden shame And I be lessen'd in his love?

I wrong the grave with fears untrue :

Shall love be blamed for want of faith? There must be wisdom with great Death: The dead shall look me thro' and thro'.

Be near us when we climb or fall:

Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,

To make allowance for us all.

C

OH yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete ;
That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall
At last-far off-at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night :
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

CI

HE past; a soul of nobler tone :

My spirit loved and loves him yet,
Like some poor girl whose heart is set

On one whose rank exceeds her own.

He mixing with his proper sphere,
She finds the baseness of her lot,
Half jealous of she knows not what,
And envying all that meet him there.

The little village looks forlorn;

She sighs amid her narrow days, Moving about the household ways, In that dark house where she was born.

The foolish neighbours come and go,

And tease her till the day draws by: At night she weeps, 'How vain am I ! How should he love a thing so low?'

CII

Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began

And on a simple village green;

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,

And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,

And grapples with his evil star;

Who makes by force his merit known

And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty state's decrees, And shape the whisper of the throne;

And moving up from high to higher, Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope The pillar of a people's hope,

The centre of a world's desire;

Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,

When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,

A secret sweetness in the stream,