A QUESTION.

TO FAUSTA.

Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows
Like the wave;

Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
Love lends life a little grace,

A few sad smiles; and then,

Both are laid in one cold place,

In the grave.

Dreams dawn and fly, friends smile and die
Like spring flowers;

Our vaunted life is one long funeral.
Men dig graves with bitter tears

For their dead hopes; and all,

Mazed with doubts and sick with fears,
Count the hours.

We count the hours! These dreams of ours,
False and hollow,

Do we go hence and find they are not dead?
Joys we dimly apprehend,

Faces that smiled and fled,

Hopes born here, and born to end,
Shall we follow ?

IN UTRUMQUE PARATUS.

IF, in the silent mind of One all-pure,
At first imagined lay

The sacred world; and by procession sure

From those still deeps, in form and colour drest, Seasons alternating, and night and day,

The long-mused thought to north, south, east, and west,
Took then its all-seen way;

O waking on a world which thus-wise springs!
Whether it needs thee count

Betwixt thy waking and the birth of things
Ages or hours-O waking on life's stream!
By lonely pureness to the all-pure fount
(Only by this thou canst) the colour'd dream
Of life remount!

Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow,
And faint the city gleams;

Rare the lone pastoral huts-marvel not thou!
The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,
But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams;
Alone the sun arises, and alone

Spring the great streams.

But, if the wild unfather'd mass no birth
In divine seats hath known;

In the blank, echoing solitude if Earth,
Rocking her obscure body to and fro,
Ceases not from all time to heave and groan,
Unfruitful oft, and at her happiest throe

Forms, what she forms, alone;

O seeming sole to awake, thy sun-bathed head
Piercing the solemn cloud

Round thy still dreaming brother-world outspread!
O man, whom Earth, thy long-vext mother, bare
Not without joy-so radiant, so endow'd

(Such happy issue crown'd her painful care)Be not too proud!

O when most self-exalted most alone,

Chief dreamer, own thy dream! Thy brother-world stirs at thy feet unknown; Who hath a monarch's hath no brother's partYet doth thine inmost soul with yearning teem. Oh, what a spasm shakes the dreamer's heart! 'I, too, but seem.

THE WORLD AND THE QUIETIST.

TO CRITIAS.

'WHY, when the world's great mind
Hath finally inclined,

Why,' you say, Critias, 'be debating still?
Why, with these mournful rhymes
Learn'd in more languid climes,

Blame our activity

Who, with such passionate will,

Are what we mean to be?'

Critias, long since, I know

(For Fate decreed it so),

Long since the world hath set its heart to live;
Long since, with credulous zeal

It turns life's mighty wheel,
Still doth for labourers send

Who still their labour give,

And still expects an end.

Yet, as the wheel flies round,

With no ungrateful sound

Do adverse voices fall on the world's ear.

Deafen'd by his own stir

The rugged labourer

Caught not till then a sense

So glowing and so near

Of his omnipotence.

So, when the feast grew loud

In Susa's palace proud,

A white-robed slave stole to the Great King's side.
He spake the Great King heard;
Felt the slow-rolling word

Swell his attentive soul;

Breathed deeply as it died,

And drain'd his mighty bowl.

THE SECOND BEST.

MODERATE tasks and moderate leisure,
Quiet living, strict-kept measure
Both in suffering and in pleasure—
'Tis for this thy nature yearns.

But so many books thou readest,
But so many schemes thou breedest,
But so many wishes feedest,

That thy poor head almost turns.

And (the world's so madly jangled,
Human things so fast entangled)
Nature's wish must now be strangled
For that best which she discerns.

So it must be! yet, while leading
A strain'd life, while overfeeding,
Like the rest, his wit with reading,

No small profit that man earns,

Who through all he meets can steer him,
Can reject what cannot clear him,
Cling to what can truly cheer him;

Who each day more surely learns

That an impulse, from the distance
Of his deepest, best existence,

To the words, 'Hope, Light, Persistence,'
Strongly sets and truly burns.

CONSOLATION.

MIST clogs the sunshine.
Smoky dwarf houses

Hem me round everywhere;

A vague dejection

Weighs down my soul.

Yet, while I languish,
Everywhere countless
Prospects unroll themselves,
And countless beings

Pass countless moods.

Far hence, in Asia,

On the smooth convent-roofs,

On the gold terraces,
Of holy Lassa,
Bright shines the sun.

Grey time-worn marbles
Hold the pure Muses ;
In their cool gallery,
By yellow Tiber,
They still look fair.