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.

PACE is ample, east and west,

SPACE

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.