'Holy in voice and heart, To high ends, set apart! All unmated, all unmated, Just because so consecrated.

'But if alone we be,
Where is our empery?

And if none can reach our stature,
Who can mete our lofty nature?

'What bell will yield a tone,
Swung in the air alone?

If no brazen clapper bringing,
Who can hear the chimëd ringing?

'What angel, but would seem
To sensual eyes, ghost-dim?
And without assimilation,
Vain is inter-penetration.

'And thus, what can we do,
Poor rose and poet too,
Who both antedate our mission
In an unprepared season?

'Drop leaf-be silent song!

Cold things we come among.

We must warm them, we must warm them, Ere we ever hope to charm them.

'Howbeit' (here his face Lightened around the place,— So to mark the outward turning Of his spirit's inward burning)

'Something it is, to hold

In God's worlds manifold, First revealed to creature-duty,

Some new form of his mild beauty.

"Whether that form respect
The sense or intellect,
Holy be in mood or meadow,
The Chief Beauty's sign and shadow!

'Holy, in me and thee,

Rose fallen from the tree,

Though the world stand dumb around us, All unable to expound us.

'Though none us deign to bless,

Blessed are we, nathless :

Blessed still and consecrated,
In that, rose, we were created.

'Oh, shame to poet's lays, Sung for the dole of praise,Hoarsely sung upon the highway With that obolum da mihi!

'Shame, shame to poet's soul
Pining for such a dole,

When Heaven-chosen to inherit
The high throne of a chief spirit!

'Sit still upon your thrones,
O ye poetic ones!

And if, sooth, the world decry you,
Let it pass unchallenged by you!

'Ye to yourselves suffice,
Without its flatteries.
Self-contentedly approve you
Unto HIM who sits above you,—

'In prayers-that upward mount Like to a fair-sunned fount Which, in gushing back upon you, Hath an upper music won you.

'In faith-that still perceives

No rose can shed her leaves, Far less, poet fall from mission, With an unfulfilled fruition.

'In hope that apprehends An end beyond these ends, And great uses rendered duly By the meanest song sung truly.

'In thanks for all the good
By poets understood-

For the sound of seraphs moving

Down the hidden depths of loving,—

'For sights of things away Through fissures of the clay, Promised things which shall be given And sung over, up in Heaven.

'For life, so lovely vain,

For death, which breaks the chain,— For this sense of present sweetness,― And this yearning to completeness!'

THE POET AND THE BIRD.

A FABLE.

I.

SAID a people to a poet-'Go out from among us straightway!

While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine.

There's a little fair brown nightingale, who, sitting in the gateway,

Makes fitter music to our ear, than any song of thine !'

II.

The poet went out weeping-the nightingale ceased chanting,

'Now, wherefore, O thou nightingale, is all thy sweetness done?'

-'I cannot sing my earthly things, the heavenly poet wanting,

Whose highest harmony includes the lowest under sun.'

III.

The poet went out weeping,—and died abroad, bereft there.

The bird flew to his grave and died amid a thousand wails.

And, when I last came by the place, I swear the music left there

Was only of the poet's song, and not the nightingale's.

THE CRY OF THE HUMAN.

I.

'THERE is no God,' the foolish saith,

But none, ‘There is no sorrow,' And nature oft, the cry of faith, In bitter need will borrow: Eyes, which the preacher could not school,

By wayside graves are raised,

And lips say, 'God be pitiful,'

Who ne'er said, 'God be praised.'

II.

Be pitiful, O God!

The tempest stretches from the steep
The shadow of its coming,

The beasts grow tame, and near us creep,
As help were in the human;

Yet, while the cloud-wheels roll and grind, We spirits tremble under!—

The hills have echoes, but we find

No answer for the thunder.

III.

Be pitiful, O God!

The battle hurtles on the plains,
Earth feels new scythes upon her.
We reap our brothers for the wains,
And call the harvest. . honour;
Draw face to face, front line to line,
One image all inherit,—

Then kill, curse on, by that same sign,
Clay, clay, and spirit, spirit.

Be pitiful, O God!