him thrones:

Ye knew him not; he was not one of ye,
Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn:
Ye could not read the marvel in his eye,
The still serene abstraction: he hath felt
The vanities of after and before;
Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart
The stern experiences of converse lives,
The linked woes of many a fiery change
Had purified, and chastened, and made free.
Always there stood before him, night and day,
Of wayward vary-colored circumstance
The imperishable presences serene,
Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound,
Dim shadows but unwaning presences
Fourfaced to four corners of the sky:
And yet again, three shadows, fronting one,
One forward, one respectant, three but one;
And yet again, again and evermore,

For the two first were not, but only seemed.
One shadow in the midst of a great light,
One reflex from eternity on time,
One mighty countenance of perfect calm,
Awful with most invariable eyes.
For him the silent congregated hours,
Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath
Severe and youthful brows, with shining eyes
Smiling a godlike smile (the innocent light
Of earliest youth pierced through and through
with all

Keen knowledges of low-embowéd eld)
Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud
Which droops low-hung on either gate of life,
Both birth and death: he in the centre fixt,
Saw far on each side through the grated gates
Most pale and clear and lovely distances.
He often lying broad awake, and yet
Remaining from the body, and apart
In intellect and power and will, hath heard
Time flowing in the middle of the night,
And all things creeping to a day of doom.
How could ye know him? Ye were yet within
The narrower circle: he had wellnigh reached
The last, which with a region of white flame,
Pure without heat, into a larger air
Upburning, and an ether of black blue,
Investeth and ingirds all other lives.

I would dwell with thee,
Merry grasshopper,
Thou art so glad and free,
And as light as air;

Thou hast no sorrow or tears,
Thou hast no compt of years,
No withered immortality,
But a short youth sunny and free.
Carol clearly, bound along,

Soon thy joy is over,
A summer of loud song,

And slumbers in the clover. What hast thou to do with evil In thine hour of love and revel,

In thy heat of summer pride, Pushing the thick roots aside Of the singing floweréd grasses, That brush thee with their silken tresses? What hast thou to do with evil, Shooting, singing, ever springing

In and out the emerald glooms, Ever leaping, ever singing,

Lighting on the golden blooms?

And Memory, though fed by Pride,

Did wax so thin on gall,

Awhile she scarcely lived at all.
What marvel that she died?

CHORUS

IN AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA, WRITTEN
VERY EARLY

THE varied earth, the moving heaven,
The rapid waste of roving sea,
The fountain-pregnant mountains riven
To shapes of wildest anarchy,
By secret fire and midnight storms
That wander round their windy cones,
The subtle life, the countless forms
Of living things, the wondrous tones

Of man and beast are full of strange
Astonishment and boundless change.

The day, the diamonded night,

The echo, feeble child of sound, The heavy thunder's griding might,

The herald lightning's starry bound, The vocal spring of bursting bloom,

The naked summer's glowing birth,
The troublous autumn's sallow gloom,
The hoarhead winter paving earth
With sheeny white, are full of strange
Astonishment and boundless change.

Each sun which from the centre flings
Grand music and redundant fire,
The burning belts, the mighty rings,
The murm'rous planets' rolling choir,
The globe-filled arch that, cleaving air,
Lost in its own effulgence sleeps,
The lawless comets as they glare,

And thunder through the sapphire deeps
In wayward strength, are full of strange
Astonishment and boundless change.

And doth the fruit of her dishonor reap.
And all the day heaven gathers back her tears
Into her own blue eyes so clear and deep,
And showering down the glory of lightsome
day,

Smiles on the earth's worn brow to win her if she may.

LOVE AND SORROW

O MAIDEN, fresher than the first green leaf With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea,

Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee
That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief
Doth hold the other half in sovranty.

Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystalline:
Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine:
Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine
My heart's day, but the shadow of my heart,
Issue of its own substance, my heart's night
Thou canst not lighten even with thy light,
All-powerful in beauty as thou art.
Almeida, if my heart were substanceless,
Then might thy rays pass through to the other
side,

So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide,
But lose themselves in utter emptiness.
Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep;
They never learned to love who never knew to
weep.

SONNET

THOUGH Night hath climbed her peak of high

est noon,

And bitter blasts the screaming autumn whirl, All night through archways of the bridgéd pearl,

And portals of pure silver, walks the moon.
Walk on, my soul, nor crouch to agony,
Turn cloud to light, and bitterness to joy,
And dross to gold with glorious alchemy,
Basing thy throne above the world's annoy.
Reign thou above the storms of sorrow and
ruth

That roar beneath; unshaken peace hath won thee;

So shalt thou pierce the woven glooms of truth;
So shall the blessing of the meek be on thee;
So in thine hour of dawn, the body's youth,
An honorable eld shall come upon thee.

SONNET

SHALL the hag Evil die with child of Good,
Or propagate again her loathéd kind,
Thronging the cells of the diseased mind,
Hateful with hanging cheeks, a withered brood,
Though hourly pastured on the salient blood?
Oh! that the wind which bloweth cold or heat
Would shatter and o'erbear the brazen beat
Of their broad vans, and in the solitude

Of middle space confound them, and blow back Their wild cries down their cavern throats, and slake

With points of blast-borne hail their heated eyne!

So their wan limbs no more might come be

tween

The moon and the moon's reflex in the night, Nor blot with floating shades the solar light.

SONNET

THE pallid thunder-stricken sigh for gain,
Down an ideal stream they ever float,
And sailing on Pactolus in a boat,

Drown soul and sense, while wistfully they strain
Weak eyes upon the glistering sands that robe
The understream. The wise, could he behold
Cathedraled caverns of thick-ribbed gold
And branching silvers of the central globe,
Would marvel from so beautiful a sight
How scorn and ruin, pain and hate could flow:
But Hatred in a gold cave sits below;
Pleached with her hair, in mail of argent light
Shot into gold, a snake her forehead clips,
And skins the color from her trembling lips.

LOVE

I

THOU, from the first, unborn, undying Love, Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near,

Before the face of God didst breathe and move, Though night and pain and ruin and death reign here.

Thou foldest, like a golden atmosphere,
The very throne of the eternal God:
Passing through thee the edicts of his fear
Are mellowed into music, borne abroad
By the loud winds, though they uprend the sea,
Even from its central deeps: thine empery
Is over all; thou wilt not brook eclipse;
Thou goest and returnest to His lips
Like lightning: thou dost ever brood above
The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love.

II

To know thee is all wisdom, and old age
Is but to know thee: dimly we behold thee
Athwart the veils of evils which infold thee.
We beat upon our aching hearts in rage;
We cry for thee; we deem the world thy tomb.
As dwellers in lone planets look upon
The mighty disk of their majestic sun,
Hollowed in awful chasms of wheeling gloom,
Making their day dim, so we gaze on thee.
Come, thou of many crowns, white-robéd Love,
Oh! rend the veil in twain: all men adore thee
Heaven crieth after thee; earth waiteth for
thee;

Breathe on thy wingéd throne, and it shall

George for England! Merry England! England for aye!

The hollow at heart shall crouch forlorn, He shall eat the bread of common scorn; It shall be steeped in the salt, salt tear, Shall be steeped in his own salt tear: Far better, far better he never were born Than to shame merry England here.

CHO.Shout for England! etc.

There standeth our ancient enemy; Hark! he shouteth - the ancient enemy! On the ridge of the hill his banners rise; They stream like fire in the skies; Hold up the Lion of England on high Till it dazzle and blind his eyes.

CHO. Shout for England! etc.

Come along! we alone of the earth are free; The child in our cradles is bolder than he; For where is the heart and strength of slaves? Oh! where is the strength of slaves?

He is weak! we are strong: he a slave, we are free;

Come along! we will dig their graves.
CHO.-Shout for England! etc.

There standeth our ancient enemy;
Will he dare to battle with the free?

Spur along! spur amain! charge to the fight:
Charge charge to the fight!

Hold up the Lion of England on high!
Shout for God and our right!

CHO. Shout for England! etc.

NATIONAL SONG

Reprinted in 'The Foresters' in 1892. See Notes.

THERE is no land like England
Where'er the light of day be,
There are no hearts like English hearts,
Such hearts of oak as they be.
There is no land like England
Where'er the light of day be;
There are no men like Englishmen,
So tall and bold as they be.

CHORUS.

For the French the Pope may shrive 'em,
For the devil a whit we heed 'em:
As for the French, God speed 'em
Unto their heart's desire,

And the merry devil drive 'em
Through the water and the fire.

FULL CHORUS.

Our glory is our freedom, We lord it o'er the sea; We are the sons of freedom, We are free.

There is no land like England,
Where'er the light of day be;
There are no wives like English wives,
So fair and chaste as they be.
There is no land like England,
Where'er the light of day be;
There are no maids like English maids,
So beautiful as they be.

CHO. For the French, etc.

DUALISMS

Two bees within a crystal flowerbell rockéd, Hum a love-lay to the west-vind at noontide. Both alike, they buzz together,

Both alike, they hum together,

Through and through the flowered heather. Where in a creeping cove the wave unshocked Lays itself calm and wide.

Over a stream two birds of glancing feather
Do woo each other, carolling together.
Both alike, they glide together,
Side by side;

Both alike, they sing together, Arching blue-glosséd necks beneath the purple weather.