A QUESTION. TO FAUSTA. Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. A few sad smiles; and then, Both are laid in one cold place, In the grave. Dreams dawn and fly, friends smile and die Our vaunted life is one long funeral. For their dead hopes; and all, Mazed with doubts and sick with fears, We count the hours! These dreams of ours, Do we go hence and find they are not dead? Faces that smiled and fled, Hopes born here, and born to end, IN UTRUMQUE PARATUS. IF, in the silent mind of One all-pure, 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, O waking on a world which thus-wise springs! Betwixt thy waking and the birth of things Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow, Rare the lone pastoral huts-marvel not thou! Spring the great streams. But, if the wild unfather'd mass no birth In the blank, echoing solitude if Earth, Forms, what she forms, alone; O seeming sole to awake, thy sun-bathed head Round thy still dreaming brother-world outspread! (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 Why,' you say, Critias, 'be debating still? 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; It turns life's mighty wheel, 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. Swell his attentive soul; Breathed deeply as it died, And drain'd his mighty bowl. THE SECOND BEST. MODERATE tasks and moderate leisure, But so many books thou readest, That thy poor head almost turns. And (the world's so madly jangled, So it must be! yet, while leading No small profit that man earns, Who through all he meets can steer him, Who each day more surely learns That an impulse, from the distance To the words, 'Hope, Light, Persistence,' CONSOLATION. MIST clogs the sunshine. Hem me round everywhere; A vague dejection Weighs down my soul. Yet, while I languish, Pass countless moods. Far hence, in Asia, On the smooth convent-roofs, On the gold terraces, Grey time-worn marbles |