As Uriel spoke with piercing eye,
A shudder ran around the sky;
The stern old war-gods shook their heads,
The seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds ;
Seemed to the holy festival
The rash word boded ill to all ;
The balance-beam of Fate was bent;
The bounds of good and ill were rent ;
Strong Hades could not keep his own,
But all slid to confusion.
A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell
On the beauty of Uriel ;
In heaven once eminent, the god
Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud ;
Whether doomed to long gyration
In the sea of generation,
Or by knowledge grown too bright
To hit the nerve of feebler sight.
Straightway, a forgetting wind
Stole over the celestial kind,
And their lips the secret kept,
If in ashes the fire-seed slept.
But now and then, truth-speaking things
Shamed the angels' veiling wings ;
And, shrilling from the solar course,
Or from fruit of chemic force,
Procession of a soul in matter,
Or the speeding change of water,
Or out of the good of evil born,
Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn,
And a blush tinged the upper sky,
And the gods shook, they knew not why.

THE WORLD-SOUL.

TH
HANKS to the morning light,

Thanks to the foaming sea,
To the uplands of New-Hampshire,
To the green-haired forest free;

Thanks to each man of courage,

To the maids of holy mind, To the boy with his games undaunted

Who never looks behind.

Cities of proud hotels,

Houses of rich and great, Vice nestles in your chambers,

Beneath your roofs of slate. It cannot conquer folly,–

Time-and-space-conquering steam,And the light-outspeeding telegraph

Bears nothing on its beam.

The politics are base ;

The letters do not cheer ; And 'tis far in the deeps of history,

The voice that speaketh clear. Trade and the streets ensnare us,

Our bodies are weak and worn; We plot and corrupt each other,

And we despoil the unborn.

Yet there in the parlour sits

Some figure of noble guise,Our angel, in a stranger's form,

Or woman's pleading eyes ; Or only a flashing sunbeam

In at the window-pane; Or Music pours on mortals

Its beautiful disdain.

The inevitable morning

Finds them who in cellars be;
And be sure the all-loving Nature

Will smile in a factory.
Yon ridge of purple landscape,

Yon sky between the walls,
Hold all the hidden wonders,

In scanty intervals.

Alas! the Sprite that haunts us

Deceives our rash desire;
It whispers of the glorious gods,

And leaves us in the mire.
We cannot learn the cipher

That's writ upon our cell ; Stars taunt us by a mystery

Which we could never spell.

If but one hero knew it,

The world would blush in flame; The sage, till he hit the secret,

Would hang his head for shame.
Our brothers have not read it,

Not one has found the key;
And henceforth we are comforted, —

We are but such as they.

Still, still the secret presses ;

The nearing clouds draw down; The crimson morning flames into

The fopperies of the town. Within, without the idle earth,

Stars weave eternal rings; The sun himself shines heartily,

And shares the joy he brings.

And what if Trade sow cities

Like shells along the shore, And thatch with towns the prairie broad,

With railways ironed o'er?-They are but sailing foam-bells

Along Thought's causing stream, And take their shape and sun-colour

From him that sends the dream.

For Destiny never swerves

Nor yields to men the helm ; He shoots his thought, by hidden nerves,

Throughout the solid realm.

The patient Dæmon sits,

With roses and a shroud ;
He has his way, and deals his gifts,-

But ours is not allowed.

He is no churl nor trifler,

And his viceroy is none, —
Love-without-weakness, -

Of Genius sire and son.
And his will is not thwarted;

The seeds of land and sea
Are the atoms of his body bright,

And his behest obey.

He serveth the servant,

The brave he loves amain ;
He kills the cripple and the sick,

And straight begins again;
For gods delight in gods,

And thrust the weak aside ;
To him who scorns their charities,

Their arms fly open wide.

When the old world is sterile,

And the ages are effete,
He will irom wrecks and sediment

The fairer world complete.
He forbids to despair ;

His cheeks mantle with mirth;
And the unimagined good of men

Is yeaning at the birth.

Spring still makes spring in the mind,

When sixty years are told;
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,

And we are never old.
Over the winter glaciers,

I see the summer glow,
And, through the wild-piled snowdrift

The warm rosebuds below.

VOL. V.

B

ALPHONSO OF CASTILE.

ALPHONSO, live and learn,

Things deteriorate in kind;
Lemons run to leaves and rind ;
Meagre crop of figs and limes;
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies.
Imps, at high midsummer, blot
Half the sun's disc with a spot :
'Twill not now avail to tan
Orange cheek or skin of man.
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the people cry.
Yon pale, scrawny fisher fools,
Gaunt as bitterns in the pools,
Are no brothers of my blood ;-
They discredit Adamhood.
Eyes of gods! ye must have seen,
O'er your ramparts as ye lean,
The general debility;
Of genius the sterility;
Mighty projects countermanded ;
Rash ambition, brokenhanded ;
Puny man and scentless rose
Tormenting Pan to double the dose.
Rebuild or ruin : either fill
Of vital force the wasted rill,
Or tumble all again in heap
To weltering Chaos and to sleep.

Say, Seigniors, are the old Niles dry,
Which fed the veins of earth and sky,
That mortals miss the loyal heats,
Which drove them erst to social feats ;
Now, to a savage selfness grown,
Think nature barely serves for one ;