Through the flats of Hades where the souls assemble

HE will guide the Death-steed calm between their ranks;

While, like beaten dogs, they a little moan and tremble

To see the darkness curdle from the horse's glittering flanks.

Through the flats of Hades, where the dreary shade is,

Up the steep of Heaven, will the Tamer guide the steed,

Up the spheric circles- circle above circle,

We who count the ages, shall count the tolling tread

Every hoof-fall striking a blinder, blanker sparkle

From the stony orbs, which shall show as they were dead.

Second semichorus.

All the way the Death-steed with toiling hoofs shall travel,

Ashen gray the planets shall be motionless as stones;

Loosely shall the systems eject their parts coeval,

Stagnant in the spaces shall float the pallid moons;

Suns that touch their apogees, reeling from their level,

Shall run back on their axles, in wild, low, broken tunes.

Will the Tamer lead him straightway to the Throne;

'Look out, O Jehovah, to this I bring before Thee

With a hand nail-pierced,-I who am thy Son.'

Then the Eye Divinest, from the Deepest, flaming,

On the mystic courser, shall look out in fire:

Blind the beast shall stagger where It overcame him,

Meek as lamb at pasture-bloodless in desire

Down the beast shall shiver-slain amid the taming

And, by Life essential, the phantasm Death expire.

Chorus.

Listen, man, through life and death, Through the dust and through the breath,

Listen down the heart of things!
Ye shall hear our mystic wings
Murmurous with loving.

A Voice from below. Gabriel, thou
Gabriel!

A Voice from above. What wouldst thou with me?

First Voice. I heard thy voice sound in the angels' song;

And I would give thee question.
Second Voice.

Question me. First Voice. Why have I called thrice to my Morning-star

And had no answer? All the stars are

All things grow sadder to thee, one by

one.

Chorus.

Live, work on, O Earthy!

By the Actual's tension,
Speed the arrow worthy
Of a pure ascension.
From the low earth round you,
Reach the heights above you;
From the stripes that wound you,
Seek the loves that love you!
God's divinest burneth plain
Through the crystal diaphane
Of our loves that love you.

First Voice Gabriel, O Gabriel!
Second Voice. What wouldst thou
with me?

First Voice. Is it true, O thou Gabriel, that the crown

Of sorrow which I claimed, another claims?

That He claims THAT too?

Second Voice. Lost one, it is true.
First Voice. That HE will be an

exile from His Heaven,

To lead those exiles homeward?
Second Voice.

It is true.

First Voice. That HE will be an

exile by His will,

As I by mine election!

Second Voice.

It is true.

First Voice. That I shall stand sole

exile finally,

Made desolate for fruition?

It is truc.

I hearken.

It is true besides

Aright true-that mine orient star will give

Her name of 'Bright and Morning-Star' to HIM,

And take the fairness of his virtue back, To cover loss and sadness?

Second Voice.

It is true. First Voice. UNtrue, UNtrue! Morning-star! O MINE!

Who sittest secret in a veil of light
Far up the starry spaces, say,-Untrue!
Speak but so loud as doth a wasted

Angel chorus.
Exiled human creatures,

Let your hope grow larger
Larger grows the vision
Of the new delight.
From this chain of Nature's,

God is the Discharger;
And the Actual prison
Opens to your sight.
Semichorus.

Calm the stars and golden,
In a light exceeding :
What their rays have measured,
Let your feet fulfil!
These are stars beholden
By your eyes in Eden;
Yet, across the desert,
See them shining still.

Chorus. Future joy and far light
Working such relations,
Hear us singing gently
Exiled is not lost!
God, above the starlight,

God, above the patience,
Shall at last present ye

Guerdons worth the cost.
Patiently enduring,

Painfully surrounded,
Listen how we love you-
Hope the uttermost-
Waiting for that curing

Which exalts the wounded,
Hear us sing above you-

EXILED, BUT NOT LOST!

[The stars shine on brightly, while ADAM and EVE pursue their way There is a into the far wilderness.

sound through the silence, as of the falling tears of an angel.

THE LOST BOWER.

IN the pleasant orchard closes, 'God bless all our gains,' say we; But May God bless all our losses,' Better suits with our degree Listen gentle-ay, and simple! Listen children on the knee!

Green the land is where my daily Steps in jocund childhood playedDimpled close with hill and valley, Dappled very close with shade; Summer-snow of apple blossoms running up from glade to glade,

There is one hill I see nearer,
In my vision of the rest;

And a little wood seems clearer,
As it climbeth from the west,
Sideway from the tree-locked valley, to
the airy upland crest.

Small the wood is, green with hazels,
And, completing the ascent,

Where the wind blows and sun dazzles,

Thrills in leafy tremblement ; Like a heart that, after climbing, beateth quickly through content.

Not a step the wood advances O'er the open hill-top's bound: There, in green arrest, the branches See their image on the ground: You may walk beneath them smiling,

glad with sight and glad with sound.

For you hearken on your right hand, How the birds do leap and call In the greenwood, out of sight and Out of reach and fear of all; And the squirrels crack the filberts,

through their cheerful madrigal.

On your left, the sheep are cropping The slant grass and daisies pale; And five apple-trees stand dropping Separate shadows toward the vale, Over which, in choral silence, the hills look you their 'All hail!'

Far out, kindled by each other,
Shining hills on hills arise;
Close as brother leans to brother,
When they press beneath the eyes
Of some father praying blessings from
the gifts of paradise.

While beyond, above them mounted,
And above their woods also,
Malvern hills, for mountains counted

Not unduly, loom a-rowKeepers of Piers Plowman's visions, through the sunshine and the snow.*

Yet in childhood little prized I That fair walk and far survey: 'Twas a straight walk, unadvised by The least mischief worth a nayUp and down-as dull as grammar on the eve of holiday.

But the wood, all close and clenching Bough in bough and root in root,No more sky (for over-branching) At your head than at your foot,Oh, the wood drew me within it, by a glamour past dispute.

Few and broken paths showed through it, Where the sheep had tried to run,→→ Forced with snowy wool to strew it Round the thickets, when anon They with silly thorn - pricked noses, bleated back into the sun.

But my childish heart beat stronger Than those thickets dared to grow: I could pierce them! I could longer Travel on, methought, than so. Sheep for sheep paths! braver children climb and creep where they would go.

And the poets wander, said I,
Over places all as rude!
Bold Rinaldo's lovely lady
Sat to meet him in a wood-
Rosalinda, like a fountain, laughed out
pure with solitude.

And if Chaucer had not travelled
Through a forest by a well,

He had never dreamt nor marvelled
At those ladies fair and fell

Who lived smiling without loving, in their island-citadel.

Thus I thought of the old singers,
And took courage from their song,
Till
my little struggling fingers

The Malvern Hills of Worcestershire are the scene of Langlande's visions, and thus present the earliest classic ground of English poetry,

Tore asunder gyve and thong Of the brambles which entrapped me, and the barrier branches strong.

On a day, such pastime keeping,
With a fawn's heart debonaire,
Under-crawling, overleaping,

Thorns that prick and boughs that
bear,

I stood suddenly astonished-I was gladdened unaware.

From the place I stood in, floated
Back the covert dim and close;
And the open ground was coated
Carpet-smooth with grass and moss,
And the blue-bell's purple presence
signed it worthily across.

Here a linden-tree stood, brightening
All adown its silver rind;

For as some trees draw the lightning,
So this tree, unto my mind,
Drew to earth the blessed sunshine from

the sky where it was shrined.

Tall the linden-tree, and near it An old hawthorn also grew; And wood-ivy like a spirit Hovered dimly round the two, Shaping thence that Bower of beauty which I sing of thus to you.

'Twas a bower for garden fitter Than for any woodland wide. Though a fresh and dewy glitter Struck it through from side to side, Shaped and shaven was the freshness, as by garden-cunning plied.

Oh, a lady might have come there, Hooded fairly like her hawk, With a book or lute in summer, And a hope of sweeter talk,Listening less to her own music, than for footsteps on the walk.

But that bower appeared a marvel In the wildness of the place! With such seeming art and travail, Finely fixed and fitted was Leaf to leaf, the dark-green ivy, to the summit from the base.

And the ivy, veined and glossy, Was inwrought with eglantine; And the wild-hop fibred closely, And the large-leaved columbine, Arch of door and window mullion, did right sylvanly entwine.

Rose-trees either side the door were Growing lythe and growing tall; Each one set a summer warder For the keeping of the hall,With a red rose and a white rose, leaning, nodding at the wall.

As I entered-mosses hushing Stole all noises from my foot; And a green elastic cushion, Clasped within the linden's root, Took me in a chair of silence, very rare and absolute.

All the floor was paved with glory,
Greenly, silently inlaid,

Through quick motions made before

me,

With fair counterparts in shade Of the fair serrated ivy-leaves which slanted overhead.

Is such a pavement in a palace?'
So I questioned in my thought:
The sun, shining through the chalice
Of the red rose hung without,
Threw within a red libation, like an
answer to my doubt.

At the same time, on the linen
Of my childish lap there fell
Two white may-leaves, downward
winning

Through the ceiling's miracle, From a blossom, like an angel, out of sight yet blessing well.

Down to floor and up to ceiling,
Quick I turned my childish face;
With an innocent appealing
For the secret of the place,
To the trees which surely knew it, in
partaking of the grace.

Where's no foot of human creature,
How could reach a human hand?
And if this be work of nature,