'WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS, NEITHER SHADOW OF TURNING

[Published 1862.]

IT fortifies my soul to know
That, though I perish, Truth is so:
That, howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall
That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
[Published 1862.]

WHAT We, when face to face we see
The Father of our souls, shall be,
John tells us, doth not yet appear;
Ah! did he tell what we are here!

A mind for thoughts to pass into,
A heart for loves to travel through,
Five senses to detect things near,
Is this the whole that we are here?
Rules baffle instincts-instincts rules,
Wise men are bad- and good are fools,
Facts evil wishes vain appear,
We cannot go, why are we here?
O may we for assurance' sake,
Some arbitrary judgment take,
And wilfully pronounce it clear,
For this or that 'tis we are here?

Or is it right, and will it do,
To pace the sad confusion through,
And say it doth not yet appear,
What we shall be, what we are here?

Ah yet, when all is thought and said,
The heart still overrules the head;
Still what we hope we must believe,
And what is given us receive;

Must still believe, for still we hope
That in a world of larger scope,
What here is faithfully begun
Will be completed, not undone.

My child, we still must think, when we
That ampler life together see,
Some true result will yet appear
Of what we are, together, here.

ITE DOMUM SATURÆ, VENIT
HESPERUS
[Published 1862.]

THE skies have sunk, and hid the upper

snow

(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),

The rainy clouds are filing fast below,
And wet will be the path, and wet shall we.
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La
Palie.

Ah dear, and where is he, a year agone, Who stepped beside and cheered us on and on?

My sweetheart wanders far away from me, In foreign land or on a foreign sea. Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

The lightning zigzags shoot across the sky (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),

And through the vale the rains go sweeping by;

Ah me, and when in shelter shall we be? Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

Cold, dreary cold, the stormy winds feel they

O'er foreign lands and foreign seas that stray

(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie).

And doth he e'er, I wonder, bring to mind The pleasant huts and herds he left behind? And doth he sometimes in his slumbering

see

The feeding kine, and doth he think of me, My sweetheart wandering wheresoe'er it be?

Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

The thunder bellows far from snow to

snow

(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),

And loud and louder roars the flood below. Heigho! but soon in shelter shall we be: Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

Or shall he find before his term be sped, Some comelier maid that he shall wish to

wed?

(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),

For weary is work, and weary day by day To have your comfort miles on miles away. Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

Or may it be that I shall find my mate, And he returning see himself too late? For work we must, and what we see, we

see,

And God, He knows, and what must be, must be,

When sweethearts wander far away from

me.

Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

The sky behind is brightening up anew (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),

The rain is ending, and our journey too: Heigho! aha! for here at home are we :In, Rose, and in, Provence and La Palie.

THE HIDDEN LOVE
[Published 1869.]

O LET me love my love unto myself alone,
And know my knowledge to the world un-

known;

No witness to my vision call,

Beholding, unbeheld of all;

And worship Thee, with Thee withdrawn apart,

Whoe'er, Whate'er Thou art,

Within the closest veil of mine own inmost heart.

What is it then to me

If others are inquisitive to see?

Why should I quit my place to go and ask
If other men are working at their task?
Leave my own buried roots to go
And see that brother plants shall grow;
And turn away from Thee, O Thou most
Holy Light,

To look if other orbs their orbits keep aright,

Around their proper sun,
Deserting Thee, and being undone.

O let me love my love unto myself alone, And know my knowledge to the world unknown;

And worship Thee, O hid One, O much sought,

As but man can or ought, Within the abstracted'st shrine of my least breathed-on thought.

Better it were, thou sayest, to consent; Feast while we may, and live ere life be spent ;

Close up clear eyes, and call the unstable

sure,

The unlovely lovely, and the filthy pure;
In self-belyings, self-deceivings roll,
And lose in Action, Passion, Talk, the soul.

Nay, better far to mark off thus much air, And call it Heaven: place bliss and glory there;

Fix perfect homes in the unsubstantial sky, And say, what is not, will be by and by.

'PERCHE PENSA? PENSANDO S'INVECCHIA'

[Published 1869.]

TO SPEND uncounted years of pain,
Again, again, and yet again,
In working out in heart and brain

The problem of our being here;
To gather facts from far and near,
Upon the mind to hold them clear,
And, knowing more may yet appear,
Unto one's latest breath to fear,
The premature result to draw

Is this the object, end and law,
And purpose of our being here?

LIFE IS STRUGGLE
[Published 1869.]

To wear out heart, and nerves, and brain,
And give oneself a world of pain;
Be eager, angry, fierce, and hot,
Imperious, supple - God knows what,
For what's all one to have or not;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
For 'tis not joy, it is not gain,
It is not in itself a bliss,
Only it is precisely this

That keeps us all alive.

To say we truly feel the pain,

And quite are sinking with the strain;-
Entirely, simply, undeceived,
Believe, and say we ne'er believed
The object, e'en were it achieved,
A thing we e'er had cared to keep;
With heart and soul to hold it cheap,
And then to go and try it again;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
O, 'tis not joy, and 'tis not bliss,
Only it is precisely this

That keeps us still alive.
ALL IS WELL
[Published 1869.]

WHATE'ER you dream with doubt possest,
Keep, keep it snug within your breast,
And lay you down and take your rest;
Forget in sleep the doubt and pain,
And when you wake, to work again.
The wind it blows, the vessel goes,
And where and whither, no one knows.
'Twill all be well: no need of care;
Though how it will, and when, and where,
We cannot see, and can't declare.
In spite of dreams, in spite of thought,
'Tis not in vain, and not for nought,
The wind it blows, the ship it goes,
Though where and whither, no one knows.

'After Chephren, Mycerinus, son of Cheops, reigned over Egypt. He abhorred his father's courses, and judged his subjects more justly than any of their kings had done. To him there came an oracle from the city of Buto, to the effect, that he was to live but six years longer, and to die in the seventh year from that time.'-HERODOTUS,

'NoT by the justice that my father spurn'd, Not for the thousands whom my father slew,

Altars unfed and temples overturn'd, Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks were due;

Fell this late voice from lips that cannot lie,

Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.
I will unfold my sentence and my crime.
My crime, that, rapt in reverential awe,
I sate obedient, in the fiery prime
Of youth, self-govern'd, at the feet of
Law;

Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings,
By contemplation of diviner things.

My father lov'd injustice, and liv'd long; Crown'd with grey hairs he died, and full

I look'd for life more lasting, rule more high;

And when six years are measur'd, lo, I die!

Yet surely, O my people, did I deem Man's justice from the all-just Gods was given :

A light that from some upper fount did beam,

Some better archetype, whose seat was heaven;

A light that, shining from the blest abodes, Did shadow somewhat of the life of Gods.

Mere phantoms of man's self-tormenting heart,

Which on the sweets that woo it dares not feed:

Vain dreams, that quench our pleasures, then depart,

When the dup'd soul, self-master'd, claims its meed:

When, on the strenuous just man, Heaven bestows,

Crown of his struggling life, an unjust close.

Seems it so light a thing then, austere Pow

ers,

To spurn man's common lure, life's pleasant things?

Seems there no joy in dances crown'd with flowers,

Love, free to range, and regal banquetings? Bend ye on these, indeed, an unmov'd eye, Not Gods but ghosts, in frozen apathy?

Or is it that some Power, too wise, too strong,

Even for yourselves to conquer or beguile, Whirls earth, and heaven, and men, and

gods along,

Like the broad rushing of the insurged Nile?

And the great powers we serve, themselves may be

Slaves of a tyrannous Necessity?

Or in mid-heaven, perhaps, your golden

cars,

Where earthly voice climbs never, wing their flight,

And in wild hunt, through mazy tracts of stars,

Sweep in the sounding stillness of the night?

O Hussein, lead me to the King.
Thou teller of sweet tales, thine own,
Ferdousi's, and the others', lead.
How is it with my lord?

HUSSEIN

Alone

Ever since prayer-time, he doth wait,
O Vizier, without lying down,
In the great window of the gate,
Looking into the Registàn:

Where through the sellers' booths the slaves

Are this way bringing the dead man.
O Vizier, here is the King's door.
THE KING

O Vizier, I may bury him?

THE VIZIER

O King, thou know'st, I have been sick
These many days, and heard no thing,
(For Allah shut my ears and mind)
Not even what thou dost, O King.
Wherefore, that I may counsel thee,
Let Hussein, if thou wilt, make haste
To speak in order what hath chanc'd.
THE KING

O Vizier, be it as thou say'st.

HUSSEIN

Three days since, at the time of prayer,
A certain Moollah, with his robe
All rent, and dust upon his hair,
Watch'd my lord's coming forth, and push'd
The golden mace-bearers aside,

And fell at the King's feet, and cried,
'Justice, O King, and on myself!
On this great sinner, who hath broke
The law, and by the law must die!
Vengeance, O King!'

But the King spoke:

'What fool is this, that hurts our ears
With folly? or what drunken slave?
My guards, what, prick him with your
spears!

Prick me the fellow from the path!'
As the King said, so was it done,
And to the mosque my lord pass'd on.

But on the morrow, when the King
Went forth again, the holy book
Carried before him, as is right,

And through the square his path he took;

My man comes running, fleck'd with blood
From yesterday, and falling down
Cries out most earnestly: 'O King.

My lord, O King, do right, I pray!

'How canst thou, ere thou hear, discern
If I speak folly? but a king,
Whether a thing be great or small,
Like Allah, hears and judges all.