He is the humble, lowly one,

In coat of rusty velveteen,
Who to his daily work has gone;

In sleeves of lawn not ever seen.
No mitre on his forehead sticks:
His crown is thorny, and it pricks.

On it the dews of mercy shine;

From heaven at dawn of day they fell; And it he wears by right divine,

Like earthly kings, if truth they tell; And up to heaven the few to send, He still cries out, "Old souls to mend !"

THE SIBYL

A MAID who mindful of her playful time Steps to her summer, bearing childhood

on

To woman's beauty, heedless of her prime :
The early day but not the pastime gone :
She is the Sibyl, uttering a doom
Out of her spotless bloom.

She is the Sibyl; seek not, then, her voice ; — A laugh, a song, a sorrow, but thy share, With woes at hand for many who rejoice

That she shall utter; that shall many

hear;

That warn all hearts who seek of her their

fates,

Her love but one awaits.

She is the Sibyl; days that distant lio Bend to the promise that her word shall give;

Already has she eyes that prophesy,

For of her beauty shall all beauty live: Unknown to her, in her slow opening bloom, She turns the leaves of doom.

FROM HIS PARAPHRASE OF THE RUBÁLYÁT OF OMÁR KHAYYÁM

OVERTURE

And those who husbanded the golden grain, And those who flung it to the winds like rain,

Alike to no such aureate earth are turn'd As, buried once, men want dug up again.

The worldly hope men set their hearts

upon
Turns ashes or it prospers; and anon,
Like snow upon the desert's dusty face,
Lighting a little hour or two— was gone.

Think, in this batter'd caravanserai
Whose portals are alternate Night and
Day,

How Sultán after Sultán with his pomp Abode his destin'd hour, and went his way.

They say the lion and the lizard keep The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:

And Bahrám, that great hunter - the wild ass

Stamps o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep.

SONG FROM "PARACELSUS”

OVER the sea our galleys went, With cleaving prows in order brave, To a speeding wind and a bounding wave — A gallant armament:

Each bark built out of a forest-tree,

Left leafy and rough as first it grew, And nail'd all over the gaping sides, Within and without, with black-bull hides, Seeth'd in fat and suppled in flame, To bear the playful billow's game ; So each good ship was rude to see, Rude and bare to the outward view,

But each upbore a stately tent; Where cedar-pales in scented row Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine: And an awning droop'd the mast below, In fold on fold of the purple fine, That neither noontide, nor star-shine, Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad, Might pierce the regal tenement. When the sun dawn'd, oh, gay and glad We set the sail and plied the oar; But when the night-wind blew like breath, For joy of one day's voyage more, We sang together on the wide sea, Like men at peace on a peaceful shore ; Each sail was loos'd to the wind so free, Each helm made sure by the twilight star, And in a sleep as calm as death, We, the strangers from afar,

Lay stretch'd along, each weary crew In a circle round its wondrous tent, Whence gleam'd soft light and curl'd rich scent,

And, with light and perfume, music too: So the stars wheel'd round, and the darkness past,

And at morn we started beside the mast,
And still each ship was sailing fast!

One morn, the land appear'd! - a speck
Dim trembling betwixt sea and sky-
Avoid it, cried our pilot, check

The shout, restrain the longing eye!
But the heaving sea was black behind
For many a night and many a day,
And land, though but a rock, drew nigh;
So we broke the cedar pales away,
Let the purple awning flap in the wind,

And a statue bright was on every deck!

We shouted, every man of us,
And steer'd right into the harbor thus,
With pomp and pæan glorious.

An hundred shapes of lucid stone !

All day we built a shrine for each -
A shrine of rock for every one —
Nor paus'd we till in the westering sun
We sate together on the beach
To sing, because our task was done ;
When lo! what shouts and merry songs
What laughter all the distance stirs !
What raft comes loaded with its throngs
Of gentle islanders?

"The isles are just at hand," they cried ; "Like cloudlets faint at even sleeping, Our temple-gates are open'd wide,

Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping

For the lucid shapes you bring" - they