VI.

Then we grow into thought,-and with inward as censions

Touch the bounds of our Being.

We lie in the dark here, swathed doubly around
With our sensual relations and social conventions.
Yet are 'ware of a sight, yet are 'ware of a sound
Beyond Hearing and Seeing,-
Are aware that a Hades rolls deep on all sides
With its infinite tides

About and above us,--until the strong arch
Of our life creaks and bends as if ready for falling,
And through the dimrolling, we hear the sweet calling
Of spirits that speak in a soft under-tongue

The sense of the mystical march.

And wecry to them softly, 'Come nearer, come nearer, And lift up the lap of this Dark, and speak clearer, And teach us the song that ye sung.'

And we smile in our thought if they answer or no,
For to dream of a sweetness is sweet as to know.
Wonders breathe in our face

And we ask not their name;
Love takes all the blame

Of the world's prison-place.

And we sing back the songs as we guess them, aloud; And we send up the lark of our music that cuts Untired through the cloud,

To beat with its wings at the lattice Heaven shuts; Yet the angels look down and the mortals look up As the little wings beat,

And the poet is blessed with their pity or hope. 'Twixt the heavens and the earth can a poct despond? O Life, O Beyond,

Thou art strange, thou art sweet!

VII.

Then we wring from our souls their applicative strength,

And bend to the cord the strong bow of our ken, And bringing our lives to the level of others

Hold the cup we have filled, to their uses at length. ‘Help me, God! love me, man! I am man among men,

And my life is a pledge

Of the ease of another's!'

From the fire and the water we drive out the steam With a rush and a roar and the speed of a dream; And the car without horses, the car without wings Roars onward and flies

On its grey iron edge,

'Neath the heat of a Thought sitting still in our eyes. And our hand knots in air, with the bridge that it flings.

Two peaks far disrupted by ocean and skies,

And, lifting a fold of the smooth-flowing Thames, Draws under the world with its turmoils and pothers, While the swans float on softly, untouched in their calms

By humanity's hum at the root of the springs. And with reachings of Thought we reach down to the deeps

Of the souls of our brothers,We teach them full words with our slow-moving lips, 'God,' 'Liberty,' 'Truth,'-which they harken and

think

And work into harmony, link upon link,

Till the silver meets round the earth gelid and dense, Shedding sparks of electric responding intense

On the dark of eclipse.

Then we hear through the silence and glory afar, As from shores of a star

In aphelion, the new generations that cry Disenthralled by our voice to harmonious reply, ‘God,' ‘Liberty,'"

'Truth!'

We are glorious forsooth

And our name has a seat,

Though the shroud should be donned.
O Life, O Beyond,

Thou art strange, thou art sweet!

VIII.

Help me, God-help me, man! I am low, I am weak-
Death loosens my sinews and creeps in my veins.
My body is cleft by these wedges of pains
From my spirit's serene,

And I feel the externe and insensate creep in
On my organised clay.

I sob not, nor shriek,

Yet I faint fast away!

I am strong in the spirit,-deep-thoughted, cleareyed,

I could walk, step for step, with an angel beside, On the heaven-heights of truth!

Oh, the soul keeps its youth,

But the body faints sore, it is tired in the race,
It sinks from the chariot ere reaching the goal,
It is weak, it is cold,

The rein drops from its hold-.

It sinks back, with the death in its face.

On, chariot-on, soul,

Ye are all the more fleet

Be alone at the goal

Of the strange and the sweet!

VOL. 11.-11

IX.

Love us, God, love us, man! we believe, we achieveLet us love, let us live,

For the acts correspond;

We are glorious-and DIE!

And again on the knee of a mild Mystery
That smiles with a change,

Here we lie.

O DEATH, O BEYOND,

Thou art sweet, thou art strange!

A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE.

'discordance that can accord.'

ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE

A ROSE Once grew within
A garden April-green,

In her loneness, in her loneness,
And the fairer for that oneness.

A white rose delicate

On a tall bough and straight.
Early comer, early comer,
Never waiting for the summer.

Her pretty gestes did win
South winds to let her in,
In her loneness, in her loneness,
All the fairer for that oneness.

'For if I wait,' said she,

'Till time for roses be,—

For the moss-rose and the musk-rose,
Maiden-blush and royal-dusk rose,—

'What glory then for me
In such a company?—
Roses plenty, roses plenty,
And one nightingale for twenty?

'Nay, let me in,' said she, 'Before the rest are free,In my loneness, in my loneness, All the fairer for that oneness.

'For I would lonely stand
Uplifting my white hand,

On a mission, on a mission,
To declare the coming vision.

'Upon which lifted sign,

What worship will be mine? What addressing, what caressing, And what thanks and praise and blessing!

'A windlike joy will rush
Through every tree and bush,

Bending softly in affection,
And spontaneous benediction.

'Insects, that only may

Live in a sunbright ray,

To my whiteness, to my whiteness,
Shall be drawn, as to a brightness,-