Ah, Quiet, all things feel thy balm!
Those blue hills too, this river's flow,
Were restless once, but long ago.
Tamed is their turbulent youthful glow;
Their joy is in their calm.

5. LONGING

COME to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth, Come now, and let me dream it truth; And part my hair, and kiss my brow, And say My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

SELF-DECEPTION

SAY, what blinds us, that we claim the glory
Of possessing powers not our share ?

-Since man woke on earth, he knows his story,
But, before we woke on earth, we were.

Long, long since, undower'd yet, our spirit
Roam'd, ere birth, the treasuries of God;
Saw the gifts, the powers it might inherit,
Ask'd an outfit for its earthly road.

Then, as now, this tremulous, eager being
Strain'd and long'd and grasp'd each gift it saw;
Then, as now, a Power beyond our seeing
Staved us back, and gave our choice the law.

Ah, whose hand that day through Heaven guided Man's new spirit, since it was not we?

Ah, who sway'd our choice, and who decided What our gifts, and what our wants should be?

For, alas! he left us each retaining

Shreds of gifts which he refused in full.

Still these waste us with their hopeless straining, Still the attempt to use them proves them null.

And on earth we wander, groping, reeling;
Powers stir in us, stir and disappear.

Ah! and he, who placed our master-feeling
Fail'd to place that master-feeling clear.

We but dream we have our wish'd-for powers, Ends we seek we never shall attain.

Ah! some power exists there, which is ours? Some end is there, we indeed may gain?