The holy Gods, they must be appeased, So I pray you tell the truth to me. The King bent low, with hand on brow, 66 He stay'd his arms upon his knee: "O wife, what use to answer now? For now the Priest has judged for me." The King was shaken with holy fear; "The Gods," he said, "would have chosen well; Yet both are near, and both are dear, And which the dearest I cannot tell!" But the Priest was happy, His victim won: "We have his dearest, His only son!" VI. The rites prepared, the victim bared, The knife uprising toward the blow, cry; Suddenly from him brake his wife, And shrieking "I am his dearest, I— I am his dearest!" rush'd on the knife. And the Priest was happy, "O, Father Odin, We give you a life. Which was his nearest? Who was his dearest? The Gods have answer'd; We give them the wife!" WAGES. GLORY of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she: Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust, Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? K She desires no. isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: Give her the wages of going on, and not to die. THE HIGHER PANTHEISM. THE sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems ? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb, Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him? Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why; For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel "I am I!" |