Beset his solitude.

He looketh seldom in their face,

His eyes explore the ground, –

The green grass is a looking-glass

Whereon their traits are found.

Little and less he says to them,

So dances his heart in his breast;

Their tranquil mien bereaveth him

Of wit, of words, of rest.

Too weak to win, too fond to shun

The tyrants of his doom,

The much deceived Endymion

Slips behind a tomb.

ART

Give to barrows, trays, and pans

Grace and glimmer of romance;

Bring the moonlight into noon

Hid in gleaming piles of stone;

On the city’s paved street

Plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet;

Let spouting fountains cool the air,

Singing in the sun-baked square;

Let statue, picture, park, and hall,

Ballad, flag, and festival,

The past restore, the day adorn,

And make to-morrow a new morn.

So shall the drudge in dusty frock

Spy behind the city clock

Retinues of airy kings,

Skirts of angels, starry wings,

His fathers shining in bright fables,

His children fed at heavenly tables.

’Tis the privilege of Art

Thus to play its cheerful part,

Man on earth to acclimate,

And bend the exile to his fate,

And, moulded of one element

With the days and firmament,

Teach him on these as stairs to climb,

And live on even terms with Time;

Whilst upper life the slender rill

Of human sense doth overfill.

SPIRITUAL LAWS

The living Heaven thy prayers respect,

House at once and architect,

Quarrying man’s rejected hours,

Builds therewith eternal towers;

Sole and self-commanded works,

Fears not undermining days,

Grows by decays,

And, by the famous might that lurks

In reaction and recoil,

Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil;

Forging, through swart arms of Offence,

The silver seat of Innocence.

UNITY

Space is ample, east and west,

But two cannot go abreast,

Cannot travel in it two:

Yonder masterful cuckoo

Crowds every egg out of the nest,

Quick or dead, except its own;

A spell is laid on sod and stone,

Night and Day were tampered with,

Every quality and pith

Surcharged and sultry with a power

That works its will on age and hour.

WORSHIP

This is he, who, felled by foes,

Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows:

He to captivity was sold,

But him no prison-bars would hold:

Though they sealed him in a rock,

Mountain chains he can unlock:

Thrown to lions for their meat,

The crouching lion kissed his feet:

Bound to the stake, no flames appalled,

But arched o’er him an honoring vault.

This is he men miscall Fate,

Threading dark ways, arriving late,

But ever coming in time to crown

The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down.

He is the oldest, and best known,

More near than aught thou call’st thy own,

Yet, greeted in another’s eyes,

Disconcerts with glad surprise.

This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers,

Floods with blessings unawares.

Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line

Severing rightly his from thine,

Which is human, which divine.

QUATRAINS

S.H.

With beams December planets dart