CXL.

THE BANQUET.

Now, as when sometime with high festival
A conquering king new realms inaugurates,
The souls of men go up within the gates
Of their new-made mysterious palace-hall.
And on their ears in bursts of triumph fall
Marches of mighty music, while below,
In carven cups with far-sought gems aglow,
And lamped by shades of splendour on the wall,
The new wine of man's kingdom flashes free.
Yet some among the wonders wondering there,
Sit desolate, and shivering inwardly

Lack yet some love to make the strange thing fair,
Yea, to their sad souls rather seem to be

Sheep from the sheepfold strayed they know not where.

CXLI.

THE NIGHT'S MESSAGE.

LAST night there came a message to mine ear
Saying: Come forth, that I may speak with thee.
It was the Night herself that called to me.

And I arose and went forth without fear
And without hope; and by the mountain-mere,
In the great silence sitting silently,

Drank in amazed the large moon's purity:
Yet was my soul unsoothed of any cheer.

But when the moon had set, a great mist lay

On the e rth and me, and to its wide soft breast Drew forth the secret woe we might not say.

Then slowly, its brooding presence lightlier pressed, It heaved, and broke, and swayed, and soared away : And the Earth had morn, and I some space of rest.

OXLII.

MILTON.

He left the upland lawns and serene air
Wherefrom his soul her noble nurture drew,
And reared his helm among the unquiet crew
Battling beneath; the morning radiance there
Grew grim with sulphurous dust and sanguine dew
Yet through all soilure they who marked him
knew

The signs of his life's dayspring, calm and fair.
But when peace came, peace fouler far than war,
And mirth more dissonant than battle's tone,
He with a scornful sigh of his clear soul,
Back to his mountain clomb, now bleak and frore,
And with the awful Night he dwelt alone,

In darkness, listening to the thunder's roll.

CXLIII.

IMMORTALITY.

So when the old delight is born anew
And God re-animates the early bliss,

Seems it not all as one first trembling kiss
Ere soul knew soul with whom she has to do?

'O nights how desolate, O days how few,

O death in life, if life be this, be this!
O weighed alone as one shall win or miss
The faint eternity which shines therethrough!

Lo all that age is as a speck of sand

Lost on the long beach where the tides are free, And no man metes it in his hollow hand

Nor cares to ponder it, how small it be ;

At ebb it lies forgotten on the land

And at full tide forgotten in the sea.

CXLIV.

WOULD GOD IT WERE MORNING.

My God, how many times ere I be dead
Must I the bitterness of dying know?
How often like a corpse upon my bed

Compose me and surrender me and so
Thro' hateful hours and ill-remembered
Between the twilight and the twilight go,
By visions bodiless obscurely led

Thro' many a wild enormity of woe?
And yet I know not but that this is worst
When with that light, the feeble and the first,
I start and gaze into the world again,
And gazing find it as of old accurst,

And grey, and blinded with the stormy burst
And blank appalling solitude of rain.

H