Fair hope is dead, and light Is quenched in night. What sound can break the silence of despair? The sky is overcast, Yet stars shall rise at last, Brighter for darkness past, And angels' silver voices stir the air. Adelaide Anne Procter [1825-1864) VAIN VIRTUES From "The House of Life" WHAT is the sorriest thing that enters Hell? Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there. EVOLUTION OUT of the dusk a shadow, Then, a spark; Out of the cloud a silence, Then, a lark; Out of the heart a rapture, Then, a pain; Out of the dead, cold ashes, Life again. John Banister Tabb (1845-1909] Each in His Own Tongue 2757 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE A FIRE-MIST and a planet,— A crystal and a cell, A jellyfish and a saurian, And caves where the cave-men dwell; Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face turned from the clod,- Some call it Evolution, And others call it God. A haze on the far horizon, The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields, Like tides on a crescent sea-beach, Come welling and surging in, A picket frozen on duty, A mother starved for her brood, Socrates drinking the hemlock, And Jesus on the rood; And millions who, humble and nameless, The straight, hard pathway plod, Some call it Consecration, And others call it God. William Herbert Carruth [1859 INDIRECTION FAIR are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer; Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer; Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter; And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the meter. Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the grow ing; Never a river that flows, but a majesty scepters the flowing; Never a Shakespeare that soared, but a stronger than he did enfold him, Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer hath foretold him. Back of the canvas that throbs the painter is hinted and hidden; Into the statue that breathes the soul of the sculptor is bidden; Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issues of feeling; Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns the revealing. Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboled is greater; Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward crea tor; Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands the giving; Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of receiving. Space is as nothing to spirit, the deed is outdone by the do ing; The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the wooing; A Grammarian's Funeral 2759 And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the heights where those shine, Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of life is divine. Richard Realf (1834-1878] A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN EUROPE LET us begin and carry up this corpse, Singing together. Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes Each in its tether Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, Cared-for till cock-crow: Look out if yonder be not day again Rimming the rock-row! That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought, Rarer, intenser, Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, Chafes in the censer. Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop; Seek we sepulture On a tall mountain, citied to the top, Crowded with culture! All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; Clouds overcome it; No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's Circling its summit. Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights; Wait ye the warning? Our low life was the level's and the night's; He's for the morning. Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head. 'Ware the beholders! This is our master, famous, calm and dead, Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face and throat, Long he lived nameless: how should Spring take note Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! Cramped and diminished, Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon! My dance is finished"? No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side, Make for the city!) He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride Over men's pity; Left play for work, and grappled with the world Bent on escaping: "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled? Show me their shaping, Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage, Give!"-So, he gowned him, Straight got by heart that book to its last page: Learned, we found him. Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, Accents uncertain: "Time to taste life," another would have said, "Up with the curtain!" This man said rather, "Actual life comes next? Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, Let me know all! Prate not of most or least, Painful or easy! Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, Ay, nor feel queasy." Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to givel Sooner, he spurned it. |