Yea, soon, no consonant unsmooth
Our smile-tuned lips shall reach. Sounds sweet as Hellas spake in youth, Shall glide into our speech. (What music, certes, can you find As soft as voices which are kind?)
And often, by the joy without And in us overcome,
We, through our musing, shall let float Such poems,-sitting dumb,— As Pindar might have writ, if he Had tended sheep in Arcady;
Or Eschylus-the pleasant fields He died in, longer knowing; Or Homer, had men's sins and shields Been lost in Meles flowing;
Or Poet Plato, had the undim Unsetting Godlight broke on him.
Choose me the cave most worthy choice, To make a place for prayer, And I will choose a praying voice To pour our spirits there.
How silverly the echoes run
Thy will be done,thy will be done.
Gently yet strangely uttered words!- They lift me from my dream. The island fadeth with its swards That did no more than seem.
The streams are dry, no sun could find- The fruits are fallen, without wind.
So oft the doing of God's will- Our foolish wills undoeth!
And yet what idle dream breaks ill, Which morning-light subdueth? And who would murmur and misdoubt, When God's great sunrise finds him out?
DWELL amid the city ever. The great humanity which beats Its life along the stony streets, Like a strong and unsunned river In a self-made course,
I sit and harken while it rolls. Very sad and very hoarse
Certes is the flow of souls.
Infinitest tendencies
By the finite prest and pent,
In the finite, turbulent,
How we tremble in surprise,
When sometimes with an awful sound, God's great plummet strikes the ground!
The champ of the steeds on the silver bit, As they whirl the rich man's carriage by. The beggar's whine as he looks at it,— But it goes too fast for charity.
The trail on the street of the poor man's broom, That the lady who walks to her palace-home, On her silken skirt may catch no dust. The tread of the business-men who must Count their per-cents by the paces they take. The cry of the babe unheard of its mother Though it lie on her breast, while she thinks of the other
Laid yesterday where it will not wake.
The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks, Held out in the smoke, like stars by day. The gin-door's oath that hollowly chinks Guilt upon grief and wrong upon hate, The cabman's cry to get out of the way, The dustman's call down the area-grate. The young maid's jest, and the old wife's scold, The haggling talk of the boys at a stall, The fight in the street which is backed for gold, The plea of the lawyers in Westminster Hall. The drop on the stones of the blind man's staff As he trades in his own grief's sacredness,
The brothel shriek, and the Newgate laugh,
The hum upon 'Change, and the organ's grinding, The grinder's face being nevertheless
Dry and vacant of even woe,
While the children's hearts are leaping so At the merry music's winding.
The black-plumed funeral's creeping train Long and slow (and yet they will go As fast as Life though it hurry and strain!) Creeping the populous houses through And nodding their plumes at either side,- At many a house where an infant, new To the sunshiny world, has just struggled and cried; At many a house, where sitteth a bride Trying to-morrow's coronals
With a scarlet blush to-day.
Slowly creep the funerals,
As none should hear the noise and say, The living, the living, must go away To multiply the dead.
Hark! an upward shout is sent!
In grave strong joy from tower to steeple The bells ring out—
The trumpets sound, the people shout, The young queen goes to her parliament. She turneth round her large blue eyes More bright with childish memories Than royal hopes, upon the people. On either side she bows her head Lowly, with a queenly grace, And smile most trusting-innocent, As if she smiled upon her mother; The thousands press before each other To bless her to her face;
And booms the deep majestic voice
Through trump and drum-'May the queen rejoice In the people's liberties !'—
And hear the flow of souls in act and speech, For pomp or trade, for merrymake or folly. I hear the confluence and sum of each, And that is melancholy !-
Thy voice is a complaint, O crowned city, The blue sky covering thee like God's great pity.
O blue sky! it mindeth me Of places where I used to see Its vast unbroken circle thrown From the far pale-peakéd hill Out to the last verge of ocean, As by God's arm it were done
Then for the first time, with the emotion Of that first impulse on it still.
Oh, we spirits fly at will, Faster than the wingéd steed Whereof in old book we read, With the sunlight foaming back From his flanks to a misty wrack, And his nostril reddening proud As he breasteth the steep thundercloud,― Smoother than Sabrina's chair
Gliding up from wave to air,
While she smileth debonair Yet holy, coldly and yet brightly, Like her own mooned waters nightly, Through her dripping hair.
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