Beneath all fancied hopes and fears,

Ay me, the sorrow deepens down, Whose muffled motions blindly drown The bases of my life in tears.

L

E 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.

O 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.

Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,'
The Spirit of true love replied;

'Thou canst not move me from thy side, Nor human frailty do me wrong.

'What keeps a spirit wholly true

To that ideal which he bears? What record? not the sinless years That breathed beneath the Syrian blue: 'So fret not, like an idle girl,

That life is dash'd with flecks of sin. Abide: thy wealth is gather'd in, When time hath sunder'd shell from pearl.'

N

LIII

OW many a father have
I seen,

A sober man, among his
boys,

Whose youth was full of foolish noise,

Who wears his manhood hale and green:

And dare we to this fancy give,

That had the wild oat not been sown, The soil, left barren, scarce had grown The grain by which a man may live? Or, if we held the doctrine sound

For life outliving heats of youth, Yet who would preach it as a truth To those that eddy round and round?

Hold thou the good: define it well:
For fear divine Philosophy

Should push beyond her mark, and be Procuress to the Lords of Hell.

LIV

H 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.

HE wish, that of the living whole

No life may fail beyond

the grave,

Derives it not from what we have

The likest God within
the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere

Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call

To what I feel is Lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope.