WORLDLY PLACE

EVEN in a palace, life may be led well!
So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,

Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
And drudge under some foolish master's ken
Who rates us if we peer outside our pen-
Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell?

Even in a palace! On his truth sincere,
Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came;
And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame

Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,
I'll stop, and say:

here!

( There were no succour

The aids to noble life are all within.'

EAST LONDON

'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, And the pale weaver, through his windows seen In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.

I met a preacher there I knew, and said:

Ill and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this

scene?'

'Bravely!' said he; for I of late have been Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, the living bread.

O human soul! as long as thou canst so
Set up a mark of everlasting light,

Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roamNot with lost toil thou labourest through the

night!

Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.

WEST LONDON

CROUCH'D On the pavement, close by Belgrave
Square,

A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied.
A babe was in her arms, and at her side

A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.

Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there,

Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied
Across, and begg'd, and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.

Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.

'She turns from that cold succour, which attends The unknown little from the unknowing great, And points us to a better time than ours.'

EAST AND WEST

In the bare midst of Anglesey they show
Two springs which close by one another play;
And, Thirteen hundred years agone,' they say,
'Two saints met often where those waters flow.

'One came from Penmon westward, and a glow
Whiten'd his face from the sun's fronting ray;
Eastward the other, from the dying day,
And he with unsunn'd face did always go.'

Seiriol the Bright, Kybi the Dark! men said.
The seër from the East was then in light,
The seër from the West was then in shade.

Ah! now 'tis changed. In conquering sunshine bright

The man of the bold West now comes array'd; He of the mystic East is touch'd with night.

K

VOL. II

129

THE BETTER PART

LONG fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare !
'Christ,' some one says, 'was human as we are ;
No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to scan;

'We live no more, when we have done our span.'

'Well, then, for Christ,' thou answerest, who can care?

From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear?

Live we like brutes our life without a plan!'

So answerest thou; but why not rather say: 'Hath man no second life ?-Pitch this one high ! Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see?

More strictly, then, the inward judge obey ! Was Christ a man like us? Ah! let us try If we then, too, can be such men as he !'