XXXI.

But I need, now as then,

Thee, God, who mouldest men!

And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I,-to the wheel of life

With shapes and colours rife,

Bound dizzily,-mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:

XXXII.

So, take and use Thy work,
Amend what flaws may lurk,

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim !
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

(1864.)

CONFESSIONS.

I.

What is he buzzing in my ears?

'Now that I come to die,

Do I view the world as a vale of tears?'

Ah, reverend sir, not I!

II.

What I viewed there once, what I view again
Where the physic bottles stand

On the table's edge,-is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.

III.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
From a house you could descry

O'er the garden-wall is the curtain blue
Or green to a healthy eye?

IV.

To mine, it serves for the old June weather

Blue above lane and wall;

And that farthest bottle labelled 'Ether'
Is the house o'ertopping all.

V.

At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,
They watched for me, one June,
A girl I know, sir, it's improper,
My poor mind's out of tune.

VI.

Only, there was a way.

you crept

Close by the side, to dodge

Eyes in the house, two eyes except:

They styled their house 'The Lodge.'

VII.

What right had a lounger up their lane?

But, by creeping very close,

With the good wall's help,-their eyes might strain And stretch themselves to Oes,

VIII.

Yet never catch her and me together,

As she left the attic, there,

By the rim of the bottle labelled 'Ether,'
And stole from stair to stair,

IX.

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
We loved, sir-used to meet:

How sad and bad and mad it was

But then, how it was sweet!

(1864.)

THE RING AND THE Book.

(Dedication.)

O lyric love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,—
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face,—

Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart

When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory-to drop down,

To toil for man, to suffer or to die,

This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and harken from the realms of help!
Never may I commence my song, my due
To God who best taught song by gift of thee,
Except with bent head and beseeching hand-
That still, despite the distance and the dark,
What was, again may be; some interchange
Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought,
Some benediction anciently thy smile:

-Never conclude, but raising hand and head
Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn
For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,
Their utmost up and on,-so blessing back

In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,
Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud,
Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!

. (1968.)

IV.

'Help and get it over! Reunited to his wife

(How draw up the paper lets the parish-people know?) Lies M., or N., departed from this life,

Day the this or that, month and year the so and so. What i' the way of final flourish? Prose, verse? Try! Affliction sore long time he bore, or, what is it to be? Till God did please to grant him ease. Do end!' quoth I: 'I end with-Love is all and Death is nought!' quoth She.

(1872.)

EPILOGUE TO ASOLANDO.

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,

When you set your fancies free,

Will they pass to where-by death, fools think, imprisonedLow he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,

-Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!

What had I on earth to do

With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly:
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless did I drivel

-Being-who?

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time

Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 'Strive and thrive!' cry 'Speed,-fight on, fare ever

There as here!'

(1889.)