But that soul create, seen self-wise, in all deeds,
In all our words, our wills, through this brief life,
This petty segment of eternity, though

Seized but of limited freedom, yet, in truth,
Even as the ship, with fire informed, that seeks
The sea, obeying but its own iron force,
Reckless of adverse tide, breeze dead, or weak
As infant's parting breath too faint to stir
The feather held to it; and howbeit at last,
Appointed thrall as much of the elements

As the white-bosomed barque which woos the wind
To her welcoming breast, is rightly for its course
Prejudged responsible; course and end alike
Chosen by us, and planned, and well, if laden
Not inconsistently. But who, because
Men know not, nor can see act's end, until
We see with God, shall deem, that man, set he
His heart, contrarious as he may, 'gainst God,
Can aught do but work out his ultimate will,
Though at an infinite angle, he thenceforth
Acting unanswerably,-and thus confounds
The law of being with doing, deepliest errs.
Laws there are twain man serves: the law of law,
Race, custom, creed, time, conscience, circumstance,
Chance; superficial this; who breathe the light
Of spiritual virtue know God's will towards good
The law of laws; all central, vital. These
To imblend by holy art, to cultured man
All excellence, and all blessing means.
Who join
With love sincere of truth, good deeds, good will,
Just life and innocent conscience; 'scaping so,
The world's self-sentenced thraldom to desires
Inequitable, and selfish pride to outvie,
And not by bettering, serve, men; reunite,
In free perfection, with divinity here.

Such are heaven's secret heirs, the adopt of God,

Unknown, unnamed, unblazoned. These be they

Whose souls though chastened aye yet chose from first,

Born of the eternal seed of heavenly life,

Light's golden generation, into time

Breathed Godwise, God translates to bliss divine,

The primal, final, total state of heaven,

And normal perfectness in him. But while

God's boundless and predestinating love

Shown in the soul world-chosen, his power displays,
His sovereignty, his freedom, God's great end,
Touching all moral being, its progress just
In virtue and judgment by the pure plain law
Of right and truth, like needful seems to prove
Heaven's equity, and to separate good from ill.

Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
There is but one great right and good; ill, wrong,
Dense, vast, howbeit to finite mind, to him
Omniscient, shadows show, not substances.
Nothing can be antagonist to God.
Let contest be 'twixt equals. He is all.
Not less, to us, of limited potencies
By ministry of evil,-whose reason sole
Of being, is that it prove, conscious or not,
Promoter of God's ends, in testing souls

Finite, but free, for good,-good stands forth clear.
God ever makes for bliss twofold, his own,
And theirs he hath made, all life: no meaner end
Worthy of him can be, or just towards them.
Who read not in the blessed belief that souls
All may be saved, read to no end. We were
Created, to be saved. We are of God.

Swayed by these truths, and compassed, as by stars,
Earth in her course, our story, mingling life,
Not cursorily, with things on high, but scenes
Showing of heaven and earth, as body and soul
In our humanity, mixed, we thankful, learn
How God by ever creating, and his own
One Being diffusing through the sentient whole;
How, too, by ruin of evil, and good's great field
By finite force for God won, for that cause
Tried, tested, and when failing, made in the end
Just, pure; he doth eternize bliss, and make
Good infinite by making all in him.

Our thoughts are bounded but by the infinite.
What comes before and after the great world,
Deep in light's secretest abyss, and life's
Immensity most reserved, is ours to muse,
Not to declare; where finite reason ends
Faith leaps, and finds firm ground in the divine.
God, thus, our Saviour, still with spirit humane
Communes; with some ir life-long sacrament,
Faithwise; which, rounding all activities
Of soul, a higher faculty than reason
Shows, though of brightest revelative power,
As the snow-headed mountain riseth o'er
The lightning, and applies itself to heaven;
A faculty which meaning gives to time;
Sanctity to man's kingly blood; and like,
And equal, interest in God's bounteous ends.
Wherefore the world, of mean believings sick
And sophistries, waits, wearying for the truth,
Now, like an angel, on the wing from heaven.
For as when, storms gone, each cloud-ghost, vapoury, vast,
Each shape, sky-menacing, the uneternal brood

Of misconceptive fear, by ministering wind
Routed, and hurled to absolute void;—we, strewn
Luxurious, on the crag's crown, nought thence seen
Save ocean's quivering outline, sharp as death,
Cutting the horizon of the after world,

And all heaven's luminous and exhilarant blue,
Eternity made visible, which o'erhangs

Changeless, this changeful sphere, complacent, eye
Those unimagined heights, aërial, calm,

Of tempests hidden, not touched; so, once earth's creeds.
Foul, foolish, or of mountainous falsity,
Fled from the face of never mutable truth,
One, indivisible, sole, we feel in this
Like verity, God's infinite fatherhood,
A faith, if formless, boundless, and the soul

All satisfying with permanent peace. The world
Is God's great will in act, heaven in repose.
Earth is heaven's floor; and as, of time's vast shows
Or small, our God,-the omnipotent operative,
World sire, the all parent, first and last of Being,
Whose eye-blink kindles suns, whose breath in sad
Reproof congeals, imbreasts, doubt not, of all
The eternal image; and, as in temporal wise,
The sun, sole habitant of the tented sky,
Lightener of all the planets, world adored,
Who yet with minute beauty all life's fields
Impearls, and things most momentary sublimes,
Still dwelling in each fairy orb of dew,

Ere to his breast he assumes; so, too, the bard,
Who heavenly objects owns with earth's, while light
And beauty scattering over all he loves

And feels with, trusts but to himself all hopes,
Artwise, of lasting record in man's mind.

Art is man's nature; nature is God's art.

All nature in the poet's heart is limned
In little; as now in landscape-stones we see

The swell of ground, green groves, and running streams
Fresh from the wolds of Chaos; hints of life,

Foreworldly, pencilled by pre-solar light,

Or Paradisal sun; so, in his mind
Ingrained, in primal purity, the main
Conditions of existence, be and bear,
Wisdom he seeks not only for himself,
But sacred rites participates in, which give,
To souls like willed, the privilege he hath earned,
And all prepared makes partners of his light.
"Twixt priestly powers and laic stands the bard,
A living link; now chanting odes divine,
Now, holy and austere, with sacred spell
Inviting angels; with fine magic, fiends

Evoking; whiles, in festive guise, his brow
With golden fillet bounden, earnest alone,
The throng to charm that seeks, or celebrates,
The games, here, there, the mysteries of life,
With truths ornate, and pleasure's choicest plea.
Man's minion thus, and monitor, though all else
Be mute, he, armed with the instinct both of rule
And right, in privilege only potent speaks
His spirit in self-rewarding song. So, ours,
Who from his youth up, save in adorning this,
His life's chief business, mission, end, with all'
Fair addings; and who all time brought, so brooked
As to his soul's intent subservient, knew
Elsewise, scant joy; but this achieved, enough:
Even as the ormer, pearly ear o' the sea,

Whose aim nor tide nor tempest shakes, but shapes;
Who, taught by orient suns and vesper skies,
Where steers the crescent star her silvery ark
O'er azure deeps, gold rippled,-many a year
Splendidly toiling, his mysterious shell,
Born of himself, a life-long miracle, gifts,
Daily, with goodlier dyes and tenderer hues;
In bulk, in beauty vastening aye; he, now,
The quivering rose-blush kindles, now, the blue
Haunts as with memory of some flame-plumed wave
Horsing the seas by night, adventurously,
Lone, errant; or of ruddiest lightning snatched
While diving; now with prismy pencil fires
Finelier, the green of travelled seas, surcharged
With tropic sunsets; now the iceberg's spell
Which binds the enchanted rainbow in its breast
Steals holily; but, chastened every gleam,
Each soft ubiquitous flash fused flickering; whilst
Vanishing, fixed; till at last one master tint,
Thinned to a thought, all hues commuting, shot,
Quick, through the whole, his lonely life-work he
Indifferently perfects; and moon by moon,
Known but to silence and the all-aidant God,
Lives self-imparadised. So tasked, his time,
Our bard, like minded nature's ends and heaven's
To accomplish, passed; for man and nature, each,
Give signals of perfections not in them
Inherent; part prophetic, part reflex;
Blind rudiments, hap, of qualities divine
Originally; our poor mean force, of power
Boundless; our cunning and coarse art, of skill

Heaven's plenary inbreath fills and fines; our ends

Finite, of the universal cause; in him

We, as in nature, not through Being, alone,

But operation, like exampled. Think!

God worketh slowly; yea, a thousand years
He takes to lift his hand off that he hath made,
When seemingly most finished. Layer on layer,
Laid as by fingers skilled in lengths extreme,
And thrilled progressive through all elements,
He formed earth; fashioned, balled, and hardened it,
Into the great, bright, useful thing it is;

Water he heired with marl, flame stilled by stone;
Its seas life-crowded, and soul-hallowed lands,
He, with the sun's broad girdle that sets aglow,
Like love's embrace close clinging as for life,

Earth's orbed breast, girt; fanned with tempests; veiled
With nebulous ocean clouds, now bright, now dark;
With virgin gold veined, dusted thick with gems;
Lined it with fire; and round its heart-fire bowed
Rock-ribs unbreakable; until, whole at last,
Earth took her shining station, as a star,

In heaven's dark hall, high up the throng of worlds.
All this did God, and thus. Nor, meanly, blame
Man, mediator 'twixt the whole and God,
Who causes like in essence, if diverse
In value would collate; nor this conceive
Extern to that most in us, the divine
And universal reason of things; but own,

That even as when in summer's sultriest heats,
At night, o'er heaven, the harmless flash looms wide,
With faint, far fulminings, and we learn, all day
We have breathed invisible lightnings, and our breasts
Arched on unvolumed thunder; so, once taught
Clearly in spirit, to realise our own

Uncredited divinity, we first feel

True consciousness of life, as filled, sphered, skied,
With Deity. Be it aye so. For aught else,

Most rests with those who read. A work, a thought,
Is that each makes it to himself, of great
Dark meanings capable, rushing like the sea,
In life shoals measurelessly; may be, as air

By the wild doves' wing beclouded, while they sweep,
Miles broad, o'er western woods, with, here and there,
Vast glimpses of heaven's central light; or, nothing;
Bodiless, spiritless. Be but ours conceived
With adequate force, and lo! we add a star
To the serene of heaven. And for man's soul,
As shown in actual, and in ultimate times
Foreshadowed, note the elements of such sphere,
Feasible, in thought; grace destinative, the strife
Of good and ill, man's judgment of himself,
And his heart's natural religion, God
Contrasting with humanity, the spirit
Uniting aye; the test of virtue tried;