In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was 40 certain, to match man's birth, Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;

And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,

As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:

Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,

Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star; Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,

For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul, All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,

All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,

Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth: Had I written the same, made versestill, effect proceeds from cause,

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;

It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,

Painter and poet are proud in the artistlist enrolled:

VII.

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,

Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought;

There shall never be one lost good

was, shall live as before;

What

The evil is null, is nought, is silence 30 What was good shall be good, with, for evil, implying sound; so much good more;

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

X.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power

Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;

Enough that he heard it once: we shall 40 hear it by-and-by. Contrast wit

XI.

umortality

soft, and all is said:

Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in

my thought:

umph's evidence

For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonised?

VIII.

singing might issue thence?

Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should be prized?

Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;

For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,

That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.

Never to be again! But many more of the kind

As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?

To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind

To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:

I will be patient and proud, and soberly 50 acquiesce.

Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,

Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor, yes,

ineffable Name?

Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!

What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?

Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?

alien ground,

Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;

Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting place is found,

The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.

Poor vaunt of life indeed,

Were man but formed to feed

On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:

Such feasting ended, then

As sure an end to men;

the maw-crammed beast?

V.

Rejoice we are allied

To That which doth provide

And not partake, effect and not receive!

A spark disturbs our clod;

Nearer we hold of God

30 Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.

VI.

Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!

Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

VII.

For thence, a paradox

Which comforts while it mocks,

Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:

And I shall thereupon

Take rest, ere be gone

new:

Fearless and unperplexed,

When I wage battle next,

Past!

Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained,

Subject to no dispute

thee feel alone.

us peace at last!

XXII.

Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,

Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,

They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?

XXIII.

Not on the vulgar mass

Called "work," must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price;

O'er which, from level stand,

The low world laid its hand,

50

Found straightway to its mind, could value 60 in a trice:

XXIV.

But all, the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,

So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,

All purposes unsure,

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

XXV.

Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke through language and escaped;

All I could never be,

All, men ignored in me,

This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

XXVI.

Ay, note that Potter's wheel,
That metaphor! and feel

Why time spins fast, why passive lies our

clay,

Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,

"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"

XXVII.

Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall;

stand sure:

70

84

What entered into thee,

That was, is, and shall be:

Time's wheel runs back or stops: and clay endure.

XXVIII.

He fixed thee mid this dance

Of plastic circumstance,

Mu and Epsilon stand for my own name.
I may not write it, but I make a cross
To show I wait His coming, with the rest,

But I need, now as then,

Thee, God, who mouldest men; And since, not even while the whirl was worst,

Did I, to the wheel of life

With shapes and colours rife,

I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine,

"And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,

"Or else the lappet of a linen robe, "Into the water-vessel, lay it right,

And cool his forehead just above the eyes, 5c "The while a brother, kneeling either side, "Should chafe each hand and try to make it warm,

"He is not so far gone but he might
speak."

This did not happen in the outer cave,
Nor in the secret chamber of the rock
Where, sixty days since the decree was out,
We had him, bedded on a camel-skin,
But in the midmost grotto: since noon's
And waited for his dying all the while;
light

Reached there a little, and we would not 60 lose

The last of what might happen on his face.

I at the head, and Xanthus at the feet,
With Valens and the Boy, had lifted him,
And brought him from the chamber in the
depths,

And laid him in the light where we might

see:

For certain smiles began about his mouth, And his lids moved, presageful of the end.

Thy thirst:

XXXII.

So, take and use Thy work:

Amend what flaws may lurk,

cave,

The Bactrian convert, having his desire,

Kept watch, and made pretence to graze a 70

goat

That gave us milk, on rags of various herb,