The riches of sweet Mary’s Son,

Boy-Rabbi, Israel’s paragon.

And thoughtest thou such guest

Would in thy hall take up his rest?

Would rushing life forget her laws,

Fate’s glowing revolution pause?

High omens ask diviner guess;

Not to be conned to tediousness.

And know my higher gifts unbind

The zone that girds the incarnate mind.

When the scanty shores are full

With Thought’s perilous, whirling pool;

When frail Nature can no more,

Then the Spirit strikes the hour:

My servant Death, with solving rite,

Pours finite into infinite.

Wilt thou freeze love’s tidal flow,

Whose streams through nature circling go?

Nail the wild star to its track

On the half-climbed zodiac?

Light is light which radiates,

Blood is blood which circulates,

Life is life which generates,

And many-seeming life is one,—

Wilt thou transfix and make it none?

Its onward force too starkly pent

In figure, bone, and lineament?

Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate,

Talker! the unreplying Fate?

Nor see the genius of the whole

Ascendant in the private soul,

Beckon it when to go and come,

Self-announced its hour of doom?

Fair the soul’s recess and shrine,

Magic-built to last a season;

Masterpiece of love benign,

Fairer that expansive reason

Whose omen ’tis, and sign.

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know

What rainbows teach, and sunsets show?

Verdict which accumulates

From lengthening scroll of human fates,

Voice of earth to earth returned,

Prayers of saints that inly burned,—

Saying, What is excellent,

As God lives, is permanent;

Hearts are dust, hearts’ loves remain;

Heart’s love will meet thee again.

Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye

Up to his style, and manners of the sky.

Not of adamant and gold

Built he heaven stark and cold;

No, but a nest of bending reeds,

Flowering grass and scented weeds;

Or like a traveller’s fleeing tent,

Or bow above the tempest bent;

Built of tears and sacred flames,

And virtue reaching to its aims;

Built of furtherance and pursuing,

Not of spent deeds, but of doing.

Silent rushes the swift Lord

Through ruined systems still restored,

Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,

Plants with worlds the wilderness;

Waters with tears of ancient sorrow

Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.

House and tenant go to ground,

Lost in God, in Godhead found.’

BLIGHT

Give me truths;

For I am weary of the surfaces,

And die of inanition. If I knew

Only the herbs and simples of the wood,

Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,

Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,

Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sundew,

And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods

Draw untold juices from the common earth,

Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell

Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply

By sweet affinities to human flesh,

Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,—

O, that were much, and I could be a part

Of the round day, related to the sun

And planted world, and full executor