XXXIV.

My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,

Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is ;

This round of green, this orb of flame,
Fantastic beauty; such as lurks

In some wild poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.

What then were God to such as I?

'T were hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use

A little patience ere I die;

'T were best at once to sink to peace,

Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws

Of vacant darkness and to cease.

XXXV.

Yet if some voice that man could trust

Should murmur from the narrow house, 'The cheeks drop in, the body bows; Man dies nor is there hope in dust :'

Might I not say, 'Yet even here,

But for one hour, O Love, I strive To keep so sweet a thing alive'? But I should turn mine ears and hear

The moanings of the homeless sea,

The sound of streams that swift or slow

Draw down Æonian hills, and sow

The dust of continents to be;

And Love would answer with a sigh,

The sound of that forgetful shore

Will change my sweetness more and more, Half-dead to know that I shall die.'

O me, what profits it to put

An idle case? If Death were seen

At first as Death, Love had not been,

Or been in narrowest working shut,

Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,

Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape

Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape, And bask'd and batten'd in the woods.

XXXVI.

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.

XXXVII.

Urania speaks with darken'd brow :

'Thou pratest here where thou art least; This faith has many a purer priest,

And many an abler voice than thou.

'Go down beside thy native rill,

On thy Parnassus set thy feet, And hear thy laurel whisper sweet About the ledges of the hill.'

And my Melpomene replies,

A touch of shame upon her cheek: 'I am not worthy even to speak Of thy prevailing mysteries;

For I am but an earthly Muse,

And owning but a little art

To lull with song an aching heart, And render human love his dues;

'But brooding on the dear one dead, And all he said of things divine (And dear to me as sacred wine

To dying lips is all he said),

'I murmur'd, as I came along,

Of comfort claspt in truth reveal'd; And loiter'd in the master's field, And darken'd sanctities with song.'

XXXVIII.

With weary steps I loiter on,
Tho' always under alter'd skies
The purple from the distance dies,

My prospect and horizon gone.

No joy the blowing season gives,
The herald melodies of spring,
But in the songs I love to sing
A doubtful gleam of solace lives.

If any care for what is here

Survive in spirits render'd free, Then are these songs I sing of thee Not all ungrateful to thine ear.