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COPYRIGHT DEPOSI1V 
 
LIFE, DEATH, 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER POEMS. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEOEGE H. CALVERT. 
 
 * COi ihj •*.-,».% 
 
 Of was: 
 
 t_c 
 
 BOSTON: 
 LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM. 
 
?Si 
 
 
 OOCf\ 
 
 
 Copyright, 1882, 
 BY GEORGE H. CALVERT. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 
 
LIFE, DEATH, 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LIFE ...♦••••-•••••••7 
 
 DEATH . 12 
 
 SPRING 17 
 
 GARIBALDI 19 
 
 ASPIRATION ............ 24 
 
 TRUTH ............. 28 
 
 IDEAL . 30 
 
 REAL 40 
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL ........... 49 
 
 ROSA 51 
 
 FOUNDATIONS ............ 73 
 
 POETRY ............. 77 
 
 CEASELESS CREATION .......... 78 
 
 SKETCHES 83 
 
 NO END . 88 
 
 OMNLPRESENCE OF BEAUTY ' . 91 
 
LIFE. 
 
 Life sparkles with poetic gleamings, 
 As Heaven with lucent stars. 
 Unto the deeper dreamings 
 
 Of the soul's solitude, fresh bars 
 Of tenderest music bring 
 A delicate nourishment, 
 
 As to our inmost virtue sing 
 
 Chorals, of angel voices blent. 
 
 The Powers that launch a human soul 
 On life's eternity, 
 On towards a boundless goal, 
 Joy with creative glee, 
 
8 LIFE. 
 
 Mid supersolar lights, 
 Mid unapproachable mights, 
 "Whose will peoples th' infinitudes of space, 
 Whose playthings are wild comets' fiery race. 
 
 Children of light are we and truth, 
 Luminaries, to beam for aye 
 In an unwrinkled youth ; 
 Untouched by sour decay, 
 "When once we be uprisen 
 Above this earthen prison, 
 Loaded no more with flesh, erect and glad 
 "We soar, buoyant and free, only with spirit clad, 
 
 Towards cleaner, wiser thought ever to mount, 
 
 Upbuoyed by Love, that streams, 
 From unimaginably holy fount, 
 
 Through all our doings, fancies, dreams, 
 
LIFE. 9 
 
 Purging them of their stains 
 
 And red, impassioned pains, 
 In God's soft arms enfolded we : 
 This is our possible destiny. 
 
 Truth watches us with sleepless eye 
 From far, superimperial throne, 
 Set deeper in the glittering sky 
 Than the one constant star who all alone 
 Guides our dark courses on the sea, — 
 One of Truth's raptured servants he, — 
 While she, puissant in primal dower, 
 Sways the whole universe with God's unmeted power, 
 
 And hand in hand with her twin-sister, Love, 
 Together they enclasp the naked moth 
 And planets and the steadfast suns above, 
 And all that throbs, e'en to the froth 
 
10 LIFE. 
 
 That rides a moment on the billow's back, 
 Illuming the dim caverns of remorse, 
 Lighting life ever on its shadowed track, 
 Missing no birth, and smiling on the birthful corse. 
 
 Th' invisible Heaven unresting weaves 
 
 Around, within us life's quick web 
 With threads finer, more beautiful than sheaves 
 Of light forth from her eyes by midnight shed. 
 
 And what a gift is human life ! 
 
 To be a new immortal spirit ! 
 Wooed by th' eternities, that it grow rife 
 The bliss and beauties of angelic good t' inherit. 
 
 < 
 
 Around, above, within us beat, — 
 Inaudible to earthen senses, — 
 Th' eternal pulses of creative heat 
 
 Aye wreathing spiritual recompenses, 
 
LIFE. 11 
 
 For which, through holy fires that in us burn. 
 
 We with a sane forefeeling yearn, 
 We the choice children of all-folding Might : 
 Not compassed round with darkness are we, but with 
 light. 
 
DEATH. 
 
 Life's loving brother, indefatigable Death, 
 Keeps Life alert and young. 
 Without him, Life's sweet breath, 
 Rank and unbreathable through healthy lung, 
 Would sicken Life himself, that, pale 
 As frighted sky in an eclipse, 
 His eyes grow blear, his spirits fail, 
 Smiles vanish from his leaden lips, 
 And, shuddering in a dull despair, 
 To see matter's unchecked increase, 
 Would shriek towards Heaven a piteous prayer 
 
 That he might quick decease, 
 Ere he be suffocated by 
 
DEATH. 13 
 
 His offspring. They, up piled in monstrous mounds,— 
 Now that they cannot die, — 
 No longer know or beauty, grace, or bounds ; 
 In unproportioned crowds of lurid life 
 
 Pressing each other for more room, 
 
 Wrangle in unavailing strife, 
 
 Faith and Hope waning in the gloom 
 
 Exuded from usurping matter ; 
 The watchful angel no more there to shatter 
 
 Its tightening fetters, hopeless age 
 Wailing in swarms of slow decrepitude, 
 
 Impotent to die, and thus elude 
 The shocks of helpless rage 
 
 At its imprisonment on earth, — 
 
 Earth in soiled ragged gray enwrapt, 
 
 Of its dear greenery unsapt, 
 
 Grown to a gross material Hell, 
 
 Where never more is heard the knell 
 
14 DEATH. 
 
 Of a new liberating birth ; 
 Boyhood outnumbering childhood, manhood both, 
 While age, more numerous than all the three, 
 
 Gasps in imbecile sloth, 
 Cursing its heavenly privilege to be. 
 
 Banish good Death, and all things soon 
 In agony would pray 
 For his recall, to lift them out of swoon, 
 
 To free them from deathless decay. 
 
 Aye, Heaven's brave minister is he, 
 The world's unwearied cleanser, 
 
 Divine in his ubiquity, 
 Of freshness and of sweetness the dispenser, 
 
 Unresting key that is forever 
 
 Opening the bridal bloom of spring ! 
 Triumphant spirit, that dost seem to sever 
 The body thou renew'st and dost re-wing. 
 
DEATH. 15 
 
 Gross earthy thoughts have made the scythe 
 Thy symbol, with grim skeleton, and skull 
 Grinning in mockery of life. A blithe 
 
 Ethereal figure, beautiful 
 
 As a May-dawn, or peeping pink 
 
 Of the first rose, or maiden's blush, 
 
 Or boreal joy's ecstatic flush, — 
 These were fit symbols for earth's beautifier, 
 
 Man's lifter to th' angelic choir ; 
 For thou, thou art the link 
 Twixt life and life. Dear Death ! loud hail to 
 
 thee! 
 Thou holy handmaid of eternity ! 
 
 All nature keeps itself alive by dying, — 
 Seeming to die ; bodies even die not, 
 They do but change ; for spirit is ever plying 
 Creative power ; and so from rankest rot 
 
16 DEATH. 
 
 Of matter life upsprings, 
 Exulting in fresh wings, 
 Breathing with a new breath 
 Inbreathed from high beneficence : there is no Death. 
 
SPRING. 
 
 Late art thou, but to come thou couldst not fail, 
 
 Divinest minister of the divine. 
 
 Firstling of the great Sun, we hail 
 Thy bounteous plenitude of green, 
 Sprung from the deep mysterious mine 
 
 Of life, unfathomable and unseen. 
 
 Thou floodst our hearts with beauty from the bloom 
 Of thy young, happy face, 
 And from our thoughts their gloom 
 With virgin joyousness dost chase, 
 And tremulous glee of flowering trees, 
 
 With whose fresh beauties the caressing breeze 
 
 Dallies, showering sweet breath into the air, 
 
18 SPRING. 
 
 And sunny kisses, with bold stealth 
 Seizing their vernal perfumes rare, 
 
 Enriching nature with her own new wealth. 
 This sudden sun-born burst 
 Of leafy life all round our earth, 
 
 Quick resurrection of hushed nature, hearsed 
 In winter's crypt, this bright rebirth, 
 This universal blossoming, 
 This certain strangling of cold death 
 By the warm Herculean breath 
 
 Of the reviving Spring 
 In her old earthen cradle, — this 
 
 Ehythmic renewal of deep nature's bliss, 
 
 Is token from th' all-loving and all-seeing 
 Of man's reblossom'd joy in a perennial being. 
 
GARIBALDI. 
 
 Again is Italy summoned to mourn, 
 Yet with a thankful cheerfulness, 
 That her loved Hero is upborne 
 When the high work, ? t was his to bless 
 
 His country with, is done. 
 Distracted Italy is one, 
 United, self -directing, free 
 
 Of foreign force, while he, — 
 One of her saviors, who 
 As child could bravely save an adult life, 
 
 And, foremost of a patriot crew, 
 Spent a stout manhood in ennobling strife, — 
 Ascended to his burnished seat 
 
20 GARIBALDI. 
 
 Blest by full hearts, which he had swelled 
 
 With freemen's blood and made to beat 
 With pulses that had quelled 
 
 Fierce tyrannies. The famous man 
 Passed calmly on, more reverenced, more dear, 
 
 To a new, thankful nation than 
 
 Any son living. 
 
 'Bove his bier 
 All the past greatness shone of Italy ; 
 
 All souls that through the struggling ages 
 Had boldly fostered her high destiny, 
 The men who live in consecrated pages, 
 Whom we that breathe outside the warm confines 
 Of Alps and Apennines, 
 
 Study for high enlightenment 
 
 And stouter bracing of our souls, — 
 
 Pages whence the new hardiment 
 
 Of hero or of thinker rolls 
 
 Upon us waves of strength and thought : 
 
GARIBALDI. 21 
 
 These gloried ones shine there in circles wrought 
 Of superearthly splendor, quick to greet. 
 
 With heavenly salutation meet, 
 Their Garibaldi, him who, single-handed, 
 Had wrested from the tyrants 'gainst him banded 
 Populous Naples and broad Sicily, 
 And given them to triumphant Italy : 
 
 Cavour, Mazzini, who so well 
 In his large soul fore drew the nation's span, 
 Victor Emmanuel, 
 The patriot King, and man 
 So true, that he deserved to be 
 King of emancipated Italy ; 
 
 Manin, and many others who 
 
 With heart-beat strong and true, 
 Had spent them for their country's good. 
 To him these were the nearest, 
 Yet hardly were they dearest, 
 
22 GARIBALDI. 
 
 So many had outpoured their blood 
 To enrich with freedom a lov'd land. 
 The aspiring Poets all were there. 
 Poets are patriots by command 
 Of love, warmed by the ideal glare 
 Which lights their being. Alfieri the proud, 
 Who sang of liberty, with a stern pen 
 Straight'ning the souls of crouching countrymen, 
 To lone, sublimest Dante, whom the shroud 
 Of exile could not deaden, but he soared 
 On flashing pinion from Hell's lowest story, 
 
 Through thickly peopled Purgatory, 
 High up to saintly Beatrice the adored. 
 
 All came who with the glow of beauty 
 Illuminate their land through Art, 
 Or clasp her in the motherly arms of duty . 
 
 Savonarola took close part 
 Beside Da Vinci, Angelo, Raphael ; 
 
GARIBALDI. 23 
 
 Heaven-widening Galileo hand in hand 
 
 Hovered with Titian. The strong spell 
 
 Of the new glory swelled the crowded band 
 With great Antiquity, when Rome 
 Was Europe. Came from highest home 
 The Brutuses and Cicero, 
 Long clean of anger, pain, and woe, 
 True Scipios and Antonines, 
 
 All glittered round Caprera's sea-set lines. 
 With lightning looks of exultation, 
 Outshining earth-drawn ecstasy, — 
 
 Looks of emancipation, — 
 Amid seraphic melody, 
 Too piercing pure for mortal's ear, 
 With glow, as of rainbows intermingled, 
 
 Great Garibaldi tenderly outsingled, 
 
 Heavenward with jubilant joy they steer; 
 
 Him, now to immortal spirit-figure moulded, 
 
 They loving waft aloft in angel-arms enfolded. 
 
ASPIRATION. 
 
 Th' innumerable Suns that star the vault 
 We wonder in, when our own Sun 
 Unrolls mysterious night, assault 
 The soul with such sublimities, they stun 
 
 Our earthly thinkings. When we strain 
 Feeling and thought to seize their meanings, 
 We vivify the brain 
 With quick creative gleamings, 
 And these, speaking with voice of solar light, 
 Unveil a supersolar Might. 
 
 Man's thought can never grasp, 
 But his high feeling can enclasp 
 This Might. With the spirit of the whole 
 
ASPIRATION. 25 
 
 Can swell and bound the soul, 
 For of infinitude we are, 
 
 And towards the farthest star 
 Can speed ourselves in happy awe, 
 
 Seize its eternal law, 
 
 And feed great yearnings. We 
 Are parcel of eternity, 
 A portion of all that we feel and see ; 
 Not th ? outward world alone, but Deity 
 Mirrors itself upon the procreant brain, 
 That glowing centre of circumferences 
 Unlimited, where endless is our gain. 
 Spirit is never subject unto fences, 
 
 But with devout elation 
 Moves through the brightening brightness of creation. 
 
 Man can reflect this brightness 
 
 Because of the inward rightness 
 Of his deep nature. He longs for the better ; 
 
26 ASPIRATION. 
 
 His true nobility chafes at the fetter 
 Of bondman, aiming to be freer, 
 
 On ever higher, purer, to uprear 
 
 His being. And in his puissant self 
 
 Is the divinity that aye protests 
 
 'Gainst pressures that would lay him on the shelf 
 
 Of apathy, foiling his high behests. 
 
 He is a winged creature, his wings beating 
 Invisibly the air, to lift him 
 To higher ranges, thus defeating 
 The lower ; he aye longs to sift him 
 Of gross carnalities, and mount 
 
 Towards spirit's primal fount, 
 Struggling to obey his soul's attraction 
 From mouldy sloth to polished action, 
 Inwardly mourning when dull vice 
 
 Embraces him in its constrictive ice. 
 
 At times, amid the passions devilish 
 
ASPIRATION. 27 
 
 Of a bad man, upshoots a holy wish, 
 Like infant's chirp within a robber's cave, 
 That circumfuses all 
 
 The father's heart, melting the pall 
 Of evil ; or like a single star,-— when rave 
 The tempest's demons, — that peeps through the 
 
 storm's 
 Cold blackness, and the sailor's heart rewarms. 
 Life should be a curriculum of prizes : 
 Man is the more himself the more he rises : 
 'T is his angelic instinct to aspire : 
 Manhood must mount, from low to high, from high to 
 
 higher. 
 
TRUTH. 
 
 In the hale birth-throes of first being 
 Was born this God, this bold, all-seeing, 
 
 All-beautifying Truth, 
 
 This old, eternal Youth. 
 
 A universal presence, 
 He rides upon the Sun's fierce beams, 
 He floats among the Sea's calm dreams ; 
 His birthful breath makes nature's crescence. 
 A thousand stars glow in his eye ; 
 Quintessence of divinity, 
 God calls him when he doth create ; 
 He in creation hath no mate. 
 "Without him man were less than beast, 
 
TRUTH. 29 
 
 And life a tasteless, hopeless feast. 
 Loosen Truth's hold on human thought. 
 Shadow his splendor in the feeling, 
 And, like a painted savage caught 
 By cruel potions, man goes reeling. 
 
 In the broad brain Truth quires 
 
 As lightning in the air, 
 When, leaping from his cloudy lair, 
 Stagnation he with motion fires. 
 
 Man's quenchless guardian-light, 
 Truth pilots him through wreckful night, 
 And should he stumble into crime, 
 Uplifts him with a call sublime. 
 
 Truth is man's spiritual Sun, 
 Older, more luminous, than the one 
 We walk by in Time's small periphery, 
 Our beaming monitor through all Eternity. 
 
IDEAL. 
 
 In what a nest of love and joy, 
 And holy mystery, 
 He lay, the baby boy ! 
 Hope in her heavenliest glee 
 Hovering, and pouring from above 
 Sparkles into the eyes of joy and love. 
 A soul-bud, beautiful 
 As angel's smile on the dawn beaming, 
 Life, mighty life, astreaming 
 Through him in currents full 
 Of perfumed promise, his soft breathing 
 To firmer beauty roseate limbs awreathing ; 
 For the great Sun looks on him lovingly, 
 
IDEAL. € 
 
 Ripening the finer elements of air 
 
 To mould him to proportion's grace, while He 
 
 Who moulds the Sun, and hath creative care 
 
 Of universal being, 
 Freights his new breath with subtle filaments 
 That speed, like lightning to our seeing, 
 To the brain, building with fire its vast contents, 
 Sowing it with the seeds 
 Of crowne'd thoughts and deeds, 
 Making it exquisitely rife 
 With all the fragrancies of life. 
 His daily living grows to be 
 One long unbroken blossoming, 
 And like some tropic tree, 
 Unstung by frost's cold sting, 
 In prodigal opulence 
 Outthrowing mingled sweet incense 
 Of flower and fruit from the same branch, 
 
32 IDEAL. 
 
 New, generous plans bloom near to staunch 
 Nutritious deeds. But he is still a child 
 
 Springing toward youth from station 
 To station, on the strong faith lifted 
 Of fearless expectation; 
 And ever undefiled, 
 For that young spirit is so gifted 
 With human upward swing 
 That in his brain is plied 
 Triumphantly Life's subtlest skill 
 In moulding: individual will. 
 Pure as the thoughts of modest bride, 
 Or consciousness that good deeds bring, 
 Are his desires. 
 Like lofty spires 
 Upstreaming in the sky 
 From solid sure foundations, 
 They mount ; not groveling in a sordid sty, 
 
IDEAL. 33 
 
 But in their swift mutations 
 Are so unselfed that angels hear them, 
 
 Taking delight to come down helpful near them. 
 The warm tempestuous straits 
 That palpitating youth sails through 
 He passed unscathed amid the baits 
 
 Of fragrant sensualities untrue, 
 
 Above his head unconsciously unfurled, — 
 Daunting th' hypocrisies of the world, — 
 
 The hallowed flag of innocence. 
 
 He entered manhood's strenuous path, 
 
 Invigorated by the intense 
 
 Clean strength of youth's elastic bath. 
 
 Fresh life he drew from a so fervent power, 
 
 It strengthened, sweetened, sanctified each hour. 
 Welcome as scented breeze 
 In spring, mysterious as the light 
 
 Of silent stars, resistless as decrees 
 
34 IDEAL. 
 
 Of Fate, and with the might 
 Of deepest heave of Ocean, 
 Cometh, flame-crested, the warm wave 
 Of love, flooding with rapturous emotion, 
 And with imaginings so bold and brave, 
 His being's core, that he feels recreated, 
 
 As with a larger soul dilated. 
 And now his life put on its earnestness. 
 The titles, husband, father, were a claim 
 His fellows had that he should bless 
 His household with th' ascending flame 
 Kindled by countrymen's and neighbor's prayer 
 For its victorious weal. 
 His manhood shone in thoughtful care 
 Of largest interests, such as deal 
 With the mind's loftiest life, and with 
 Sound enterprises, of such pith 
 
 They strengthen while they purge 
 
IDEAL. 35 
 
 The vital currents of communities. 
 
 His hopes, sprung from the purest deeps 
 Of intuition, bore him to the verge 
 
 Of present possibilities. 
 
 He stood upon the heights whence leaps 
 
 To loftier heights prophetic vision, 
 (The heights that gender popular derision.) 
 
 In these profoundest moods, 
 When on itself the mind creative broods, 
 He looked like Shelley, or still younger Keats, 
 When rapt, by inspiration inly stirred, 
 
 With head upturned, on magic seats 
 They hearken for the voice by genius heard ; 
 
 For he, too, was a poet. Verse 
 He wrote not, but that rhythmic sweep of thought 
 
 He had which comes of feelings wrought 
 
 By noble sympathies, that nurse 
 
 The will to lofty deeds, and send 
 
36 IDEAL. 
 
 The wishes outward where they blend 
 With beauty's magic to create 
 On the broad solid ground 
 Of practice just, compelling very Fate 
 To second his aspiring bound. 
 So rich he was in human feeling, 
 And on his lustrous path he trod 
 With such religious sure reliance 
 Ever to largest principles appealing, 
 That like great Kepler in celestial science, 
 
 He, too, could think the thoughts of God. 
 Unto the beautiful, — wherein 
 Creative mind is most revealed, — 
 His soul was so akin, 
 That to him were unsealed 
 Secrets of the vast All. 
 Much of its mystery 
 Was opened to him in the fall 
 
IDEAL. 37 
 
 Of Niagaras, in the tideful sea, 
 
 In midnight orbs' wise twinkle, 
 
 In the calm throb of his own pulse, 
 
 In the auroral lights that sprinkle 
 The night-born dew with glory, 
 
 In the great thunders that convulse 
 The clouds, in all the heroic traits of Story. 
 
 Nay, in the common and the little 
 Flashes the beautiful, 
 
 In grass and grain, in every tittle 
 Of visible, audible nature, in the dull 
 
 As in the bright. Creative power 
 Is nowhere felt but there upflames the dower 
 
 Of beauty's life. The microscope 
 
 Keveals the beautiful in mud, 
 Flaring upon us an immense new hope, 
 For tiniest earthy particle is a bud 
 Of promise. What, — could its keen focus reach 
 Into the darkest heart, — what would it teach ? 
 
38 IDEAL. 
 
 Men, living men, were his rich source 
 Of knowledge ; for in them the fineness 
 
 Outshone, beside the force, 
 
 Of infinite divineness. 
 His daily comrades were the great 
 Of the big past, men of such weight 
 
 Their fiery thoughts and deeds 
 
 Become prolific seeds 
 Planted in the universal mind. 
 The mightiest of men, the Nazarene, 
 The topmost man of all his kind, 
 
 Whose life was in the clean 
 Inspiring deeps of sympathy, 
 Him he aye studied as an exemplar 
 Of the highest in humanity. 
 Thinking good thoughts, looking afar 
 
 Beyond the smaller self, 
 The worldly lusts of show and power and pelf, 
 
IDEAL. 39 
 
 His day lighted by loves, ne'er dimmed by fears, 
 
 He grew in wisdom with the years, 
 His life one limpid stream of joyous duty, 
 "Which filled it full as June with beauty, 
 So full that time brought him no oldness. 
 Spirit ruled him as it ruled Socrates ; 
 And so, when on his flesh at last crept coldness, 
 Shone bright before his spiritual eye the keys 
 Of th' Heav'n he had made about him on the earth ; 
 
 And from his body's bier 
 He rose in th' ecstasy of a new birth, 
 His face aglow with beams thrown from th* angelic 
 sphere. 
 
EEAL. 
 
 for a pen whose ropy ink 
 
 Were purged by piteous tears ! 
 So when I come to think 
 Of th' omnipresent ill that sears 
 The tender, sapful, noble human head- 
 words may grow tremulous with fellow-pain, 
 But bold to take the part 
 E'en of the lowest, who have lain 
 Wallowing in crime and lust. 
 Can we be loyal to our higher being, 
 Can we be pious, loving, just, 
 Our inward eyes open to seeing 
 What went before and is to come, — 
 Our love and pity will grow deeper, 
 
REAL. 41 
 
 But so with hope enlightened, that the dumb 
 Would speak to us, and smile the very leper. 
 In what a hot-bed of uncleanness, want, 
 
 And gross publicity, 
 
 That mother, famished, gaunt, 
 Gives birth to him who is to be 
 
 A man 'mong other men ! 
 The first breath that babe breathes is foul, 
 His cradle is a crowded pen 
 Of blighted manhood, whence a ghoul 
 Would fly, baffled by bloodless pallor, 
 
 Where unseen devils grin 
 In mockery of human squalor 
 
 And misery's plaintive din. 
 
 In such an atmosphere, 
 
 In a slim stalk so rooted, 
 None of the juices can inhere 
 
 Of blooming babyhood. 
 
42 REAL. 
 
 The mother's milk that makes his blood 
 
 "With oozy slime is sooted, 
 No blossoms sprout, but only thorns, 
 And these turn tortuous back upon their stem, 
 Poisoning its tardy sap. Upon his morns 
 Nor joy nor sunbeams shine, to sweeten them. 
 Begotten so, so bred, 
 The sportful fairies, whose delight 
 It is to play among the curls 
 
 Of dimpled childhood's head, 
 Sprinkle upon him tiny pearls 
 Of tears, and saddened take their flight. 
 Missing th' ambrosial endless bath 
 Of feminine tenderness, that hath 
 Quick nurture in it for his craving heart, 
 
 He languishes and droops. 
 Hardly hath he a childhood in these coops 
 Of deprivation, suffering aye the smart 
 
REAL. 43 
 
 Of pain, he whose whole day should be 
 Joyous as morning's sunlit dew, 
 Painless as a young air-fed tree, 
 Thankful as April's carol new. 
 Nature, with her close lessons, was to him 
 Less than a step-dame. In her lenient lap 
 'T was not for him to lie : he was a limb 
 Torn from her cruelly, which her sweet sap 
 Could no more animate ; for e'en her fount 
 Within him was befouled by rank 
 Bitter and weedy juices. 
 The flood from feeling's sluices 
 Ran inward ; he became a tank 
 Secluded, sunless, whence could mount 
 No breathing to the God of Eight. 
 
 Was due his soured maimed plight 
 To antenatal deprivation. 
 
44 REAL. 
 
 Not guilty was he of self-desecration : 
 
 His birth-gifts were lesions and losses ; 
 Nature herself, she shut him off 
 
 From Nature ; for her boons he had her crosses ; 
 
 A nightmare dim, was life, he could not doff ; 
 
 The goads that pricked him to a guilty tomb 
 She fastened on him in the womb. 
 
 He was born chained, nor could he wish him free ; 
 
 Growing into false freedom he became 
 
 A Bedouin of the street ; he could not be 
 Forecasting worker ; a good name 
 He never could be crowned with ; Crime 
 Crouching about him, spread 
 Its pliant net, which Time 
 Tightened about his head. 
 
 What is man ■ — what, society — 
 And what is Nature's self, that she 
 
REAL. 45 
 
 Should mock us with such fellows, men 
 
 Who issue not from homes, but from a den, 
 
 To prey upon their brothers ; for they are 
 
 Our brothers, seared at birth with sin's black scar, 
 
 Souls damned ere they have lived their life, 
 Their life a doom of hate and bleeding strife. 
 Why live they, these curst creatures, men who dare 
 No whither look ; if inward, they are met 
 
 With the soul's shudder ; if they glare 
 At Heaven, the stars twinkle a threat. 
 
 Mysterious being sweeps 
 From height to height, from deep to deeps, 
 
 Higher and deeper ever ; 
 
 And man's upright endeavor 
 Can compass more and more these heights, 
 
 The more his own deep being 
 
 Grows master of the mights 
 Wherewith his soul is gifted by the all-seeing. 
 
46 REAL. 
 
 Himself partakes of the creative power : 
 
 This is his bounteous mighty dower. 
 Such mastery is a token 
 Of manhood, strong to have broken 
 Many a chain that bound him, 
 
 And with Truth's diadem becrowned him. 
 Within him are the forces that uplift 
 
 His life to this free altitude. 
 Such freedom is a gift 
 
 With spiritual sovereignty endued. 
 He is become more than an earthly king, 
 And rules, as Jesus rules, 
 
 Through indestructible rights which bring 
 Resistless sway, that schools 
 Men's minds through their own light 
 
 Kindled by the supremest might. 
 In this exalted zeal 
 
 Angels become his aids, for they 
 
REAL. 47 
 
 Are only men who think and feel 
 More finely, having dropped their clogging clay. 
 
 When through a self-earned moral sovereignty 
 
 Many shall have become loyal and free, 
 
 Then these can free their brothers, 'bolish jails, 
 
 Silence the multitudinous wails 
 
 Of vice and crime. But we are all 
 As yet too heedless of the higher call, 
 Too much the slaves of sense and fallacies. 
 We build luxurious jails, and call them palaces ; 
 Out of the common self and vain conceits 
 We build theologies that cannot save, 
 Being but rotting steps, showy deceits, 
 
 That wilder and the more enslave. 
 This self-emancipation is a weary 
 
 Unceasing battle of the higher 
 Against the lower self, often with dreary 
 
48 REAL. 
 
 Outlook ; but God is not a liar. 
 Who gave us reason, hope, and aspiration 
 
 That they should droop unto prostration. 
 Onward and upward is the rally-cry 
 
 That ever sounds above the din 
 Of life's tough war, aye, cheering us to die 
 
 Champions of freedom from sour sin. 
 Deep in the best souls lives a true ideal, 
 And interlinked therewith, as love with duty, 
 
 Forever glows the consciousness 
 That we ourselves and brother men can bless 
 
 With daily and supremest beauty, 
 Marrying th' ideal with the real. 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 I. 
 
 Theoughout th' eternal sequences of time 
 
 Momently is shed by every fiery Sun 
 
 Of the hot hundred millions safely spun 
 
 Into immensity by the sublime 
 
 Almighty Will, the Beautiful, whose clime 
 
 Is the universal air, across which run 
 
 Ceaseless creative messages that stun 
 
 Our thought, straining after words to rhyme 
 
 With th' unimaginably great. In each 
 
 Creative thought glows, as its very soul, 
 
 The Beautiful, which is essence divinest, 
 
 That colors, shapes and perfumes the vast Whole 
 
 And every part, e'en to the simple finest, 
 
 Sparkling wherever thought and feeling reach. 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 II. 
 
 Beauty's deep office holy is to teach, 
 Through the purification of delight 
 Kindling into clear vision the higher sight. 
 Within a cove, upon a sunny beach, 
 I have seen the mighty Ocean,— without breach 
 Of his high privileges, stormful might 
 Laying aside, — come calmly in, with bright 
 Dear children, round, ruddy, as ripened peach, 
 To toy, gently rolling low-crested billows 
 Into their fearless arms, — like monarch playing 
 On the floor with his gleeful boys, arraying 
 Himself in love instead of robe and crown, — 
 The waves wooing the little limbs like pillows : 
 A sight the eyes in lustral tears t-o drown. 
 
ROSA. 
 
 She was a child, and not a child, 
 She looked so blandly wise 
 Out of her large blue eyes. 
 Her gentleness was wild 
 With a quick freedom fawn-like, 
 And freshness that was dawn-like. 
 Docile to all her teaching, 
 Yet from within she seemed to draw 
 The best, and, as she were upreaching 
 For something that she heard or saw, 
 
 Would silent sit, her head 
 Upturned in visionary mood, 
 As though her tender thoughts were fed 
 
52 ROSA. 
 
 By angels with unearthly food. 
 Two romping brothers, who were older, 
 At first would rudely mock her 
 
 For trances that did hold her 
 Apart. But soon they ceased to shock her 
 With boyish gibings. She 
 By sure degrees became 
 To them a mystery 
 For which they had no taunting name. 
 The father's love almost to awe 
 Was lifted towards his blooming girl, 
 Who with deep tenderness could thaw 
 His colder moods, as she would coy unfurl 
 Before him thoughts so luminously true 
 They soothed with lessons holier than he knew. 
 
 Lovelier she blossomed with each year, 
 As though creative spirit rained its best 
 Upon her, and would rear 
 
ROSA. 53 
 
 A being ablaze with Beauty's sovereign crest, 
 Beauty, sovereign solely through glow 
 Of clean unselfish feeling ; 
 And then it is the promise-bended bow 
 A heaven above revealing. 
 Her father and her brothers felt, — 
 
 And half unconsciously, — 
 This subtle power, that could melt 
 To tenderness the three, 
 And on her bearing throws 
 Its grace, as on the rose 
 A fragrant sap the rose's loveliness. 
 
 Upon the mother's heartstrings press 
 Close sympathies so deep 
 They her whole nature tune 
 To harmonies that steep 
 Her in a faith that nothing can impugn. 
 Every hour she would fold 
 The daughter to a breast, 
 
54 ROSA. 
 
 That almost ached with love it could not hold, 
 Thus easing a sweet fulness that oppressed. 
 Rosa would lie in infinite content, 
 Their beings each in other blent. 
 
 At noon one day she was not there ; 
 Empty at dinner, too, her place. 
 Then they all learnt what a cold air 
 They breathed without her glowing face. 
 And still she came not : then grew pale 
 The mother, restless the two brothers. 
 The father, with a male 
 Paternal strength comforting the lone mother's 
 Quick fears, strode into the small town, 
 The boys following in tears. 
 Soon, loosened from all fears, 
 They were upon her track ; 
 For she already had a dear renown 
 
ROSA. 55 
 
 For beauty and for kindliness. Ban back 
 
 The joyful, weeping, elder brother 
 
 To bring joy to his weeping mother. 
 They found her in a fever-stricken hovel, 
 
 With soft wet cloths cooling the skin 
 
 Of two young children. They who grovel 
 In the abjectness of vain self-pampering 
 
 Would start at that which Cherubin 
 
 Are holier for witnessing. — 
 Beside them, on another bed of straw, 
 
 Their mother lay, her features lank 
 With the worn pallor which gaunt fevers gnaw. 
 When Rosa moved to follow, 
 
 She scarcely had the strength to thank 
 Her gentle nurse. When Rosa kissed her hollow, 
 
 Wan cheek, she reverently laid 
 
 Her hand upon the child, and said, 
 " come, come again ! " 
 
56 ROSA. 
 
 Her words thrilling with thankfulness and pain. 
 The body goes, the soul remains. 
 When Eosa passed into the street 
 Her presence still was felt, nor could the pains 
 
 Eesume their wasting heat. 
 A soul-joy planted near a sorrow 
 Works with such healing sympathy 
 
 That even by to-morrow 
 
 The grief will no more be. 
 The soul is a creative power : 
 It builds this wondrous fleshly frame, 
 And it can cure the ills that cower 
 
 Within it, life to lame. 
 Souls are all brothers, and the healthiest 
 
 Draws from its primal source 
 
 A deep benignant force, 
 
 To which the first and wealthiest 
 Of earthly goods is empty chaff 
 
ROSA. 57 
 
 Winnowed by wind from wheats 
 Or as the worldling's laugh 
 "Wherewith he would his own soul cheat, 
 Eosa ran on, before her father, brother, 
 To meet her dearest mother. 
 
 In a gifted girl, outringing 
 Joy in a healthy home, a fervor, 
 
 Of life is ever bringing 
 
 Fresh will and strength to nerve her 
 For each return of morning. Sorrow 
 As yet could take no living root, 
 But each day's little grief the morrow 
 Dried off ere it could grow to fruit. 
 Eosa, with all her inward brooding, 
 Was most herself when other eyes 
 Looked into hers. She, excluding 
 None from her love, closely could prize 
 
58 ROSA. 
 
 Both old and young, the false and true man : 
 
 Herself so fully human. 
 Where the rays fell of her warm eyes 
 They made love sprout, in her school-mates 
 Growing so strong, it crushed the lies 
 Of Envy, which abates 
 Earely its rancor towards the gifted good : 
 Envy feeds on its own infected blood. 
 So alive was she with fellow-feeling, 
 Her ruling impulse was to help 
 
 The weak, happiest when kneeling 
 By the sick poor ; nor was the whelp 
 Of heartless lust beyond the reach 
 Of her capacity to teach. 
 A sympathetic tenderness can waken 
 A hope, a love, in soul the most forsaken. 
 
 Angelic instincts taught her 
 There is a soul of good in evil things. 
 
ROSA. 59 
 
 And now caressing years had brought her 
 A fifteenth May, when life its censer swings 
 
 With freshest perfumes laden. 
 Never did flowers enrich their bloom 
 
 With joy of heavenlier maiden; 
 
 For in and through this glow, — 
 As light upon a landscape's beauty, 
 Transfiguring the outward show, — 
 Shone the pure soul of love and duty, 
 Which, like th' invisible spirit that makes 
 
 Night's starr'd sublimity, 
 In the beholder's raptured being wakes 
 Feelings of high divinity. 
 Athrough the portals garlanded 
 
 Of womanhood she gazed 
 With feelings less with sadness sped 
 Than joy ; nor was the vista hazed 
 With passion's dim imaginings, 
 
60 ROSA. 
 
 Which make the self an ever-shifting centre 
 
 Of prosperous being. Wings, 
 Gilded by whiter rays, young Fancy lent her, 
 Rays that illume a higher plane 
 Whereon both joy and pain 
 Are tempered by emotion 
 That stills the soul's high yearning, 
 Like cordial piety's devotion 
 Invisible inward incense burning. 
 Beyond the self she could untimely look, 
 
 Having as child far visions, 
 Wiser than those that from a darkened nook 
 Rule th' aged worldling's confident decisions. 
 Appearances had never flattered 
 
 Even her untilled youth 
 With misty magnifyings. Truth 
 Enveloped her and shattered 
 The films that cause the false and small to seem 
 
ROSA. 61 
 
 The large and true, and make, 
 To most, life a delusive dream, 
 From which on earth they never wake. 
 So, into womanhood she carried 
 Infantile innocence, with its first tender 
 Blossoms, indissolubly married 
 With angel's wisdom to defend her. 
 Her life she could not live amid the shoals 
 And sands whereon life's ocean rolls, 
 And breaks its mightiness in foam. 
 Like the finned travelers of the sea, 
 
 Her sole congenial home 
 Was in the deeps, of deep humanity. 
 
 And these she found beside 
 The shoals ; for always there are deeps 
 Where is a soul ; and where abide 
 
 Its master-loves, and leaps 
 
 Its inmost flame, she peered. 
 
62 ROSA. 
 
 And met thankful reflection of her feeling, 
 Thankfullest from hearts most seared. 
 Like Pharos high she stood, appealing 
 
 To passers mid false Fashion's 
 Cold shallows and unfervent passions. 
 None were repelled. Her beauty drew 
 All to her, as the magnet steel, 
 And then, her modest earnestness but few, 
 Nay none, could long withstand, and they would feel 
 Their hearts warm with new love. 
 A jealous matron spoke 
 To Rosa with a sneer would move 
 A worldly girl's quick wrath ; it could provoke 
 
 In her only meek humbleness. 
 " Nay, I pretend to naught," with a deep blush 
 She said, that made her loveliness 
 So whelming, it could crush 
 The- matron's jealousy, that she, with look 
 
' ROSA. 63 
 
 Of mingled love and shame, 
 
 The dazzling maiden took 
 Into her arms, — with a self -blame 
 
 Not known before, — did press, 
 And with true tenderness caress. 
 Upon her cheek Rosa's tears fell 
 
 As Heaven's gift of rain 
 In autumn to depleted well. 
 
 Into that glowing focus, Kosa's brain, 
 
 Had poured their ripening rays 
 
 Twenty-one summers ; she 
 Felt the high part that woman plays, 
 As yet but half self-consciously. 
 The mastering passion, that unveils 
 Life's beauties, wants, vibrations, deeps, — 
 As morning's glow earth's wonders, — assails 
 The whole strong being to wake from sleeps 
 
64 ROSA. 
 
 That hold it passive, she had felt, 
 Not yielded to : she would not break 
 Her nature's wholeness, and she dwelt 
 In motives so impersonal, that, to stake 
 Them on uneven marriage, were 
 
 To risk her life's success. 
 The man, for whom she might have joyed 
 In love's full rapture, was both fair 
 To look on and to listen to ; to bless 
 
 Life-union too alloyed 
 With self. She lived out of herself, and he 
 For and within himself. Her mate 
 
 She knew he could not be ; 
 She knew, moreover, how to school her. 
 So strong she was and pure, she made the Fate 
 Herself, that seemed to rule her. 
 The heights whereon she lived were heights 
 From lowliness. Into the nights 
 
ROSA. 65 
 
 Of bodily and spiritual need 
 She brought beams of th' illumination 
 That had so splendently enfreed 
 Herself. There was accumulation 
 Of wealthiest wealth. All that she owned 
 She would impart ; and as her riches 
 Were boundless spiritual treasures, they were loaned 
 Freely as air or promises of witches. 
 In her, life was an ever active love. 
 
 As whitened Alps the Sun 
 
 With heavenly heat doth move 
 To pour unstinted streams upon 
 
 The thankful plains and valleys, 
 
 The warmth of her large soul 
 Drove her towards unprovided alleys, 
 
 To allay a ceaseless dole. 
 
 The freedom she enjoyed, 
 
 Through soaring powers inborn, — • 
 
66 ROSA. 
 
 By thoughtful will whetted, upbuoyed, — 
 Inspired her soul with life the thorn 
 Of baffled love, that wounded 
 A tender bosom, to draw out, 
 To hush the petty cries that sounded 
 Through that wide palace, and to rout 
 The whimpering imps who would usurp 
 Its glowing hospitable halls. 
 
 Thus did great Freedom, — greater 
 Than passion-swayed Jupiter, — 
 Offspring of spiritual will, 
 The roots of amorous love extirp, 
 With its loud partial calls. 
 Nay more, she could distill, 
 From thwarted feeling, balm 
 That opened wider view, 
 And wrought that spirit-calm 
 Of conquest which doth aye renew 
 
ROSA. 67 
 
 With freshened force the sway 
 Of the high self, and makes an atmosphere 
 For longer sight and action's surer way. 
 Thus of herself she grew more fully master, 
 Turning to light whereby to steer 
 
 What seemed at first disaster. 
 
 Life deepened round her, and the more she knew 
 The more she found to do. 
 
 Life deepened, but it darkened not. 
 
 Seen deeper, life is nowhere dark. 
 
 In lookers' vision is a spot 
 
 That swallows up life's hopeful spark, 
 
 A spot black with the inground grime 
 
 Of false theologies and crime 
 
 Ubiquitous. Rosa saw deeper. 
 
 Deeper she saw, because she felt 
 So deeply, purely. Calm as dreamless sleeper, 
 
 She saw the basest. 
 
68 ROSA. 
 
 Near her dwelt 
 A cruel father of motherless daughters. 
 To them she came to be like a new mother 
 As naturally as waters 
 Their level find. No other 
 Could have so long that door 
 Kept open. Hospitality 
 
 He knew not, and his core 
 Was so unsocial that, to flee 
 A stranger's face and talk 
 No blandishment could balk. 
 Deeper than blandishment 
 Was Rosa's undesigned attractiveness. 
 In her triumphantly were blent 
 The soul's and body's best address. 
 He even loved to see her enter, 
 And by her tuneful voice 
 And the quick power her soulful manners lent her 
 
ROSA. 69 
 
 His rudeness was entranced, as by a choice 
 
 Adagio is wild leopard's. 
 
 To his mild orphan girls 
 Her presence was a guardianship, as shepherd's 
 
 To helpless flock. To sudden whirls 
 Of wrathful ruggedness he was a prey, 
 
 Tore which, as galliots in a squall, 
 
 His gentle daughters quailed. One day, 
 
 On provocation small, 
 Or none, he thundered angry speech. 
 Eosa rose quick with features flushed, 
 Spoke warm rebuke at such a breach, 
 
 And left the chamber. Hushed 
 As funeral group, the stillness broken 
 
 By sobs, was that sad room. 
 The father paced, pale, no word spoken ; 
 
 The daughters sunk in gloom 
 At the thought, they should not see her more. 
 
70 ROSA. 
 
 A slow half hour had gone : the door 
 Opened, and as the day's first light 
 On anxious crew, near rockbound coast, 
 Fighting 'gainst wind and night, 
 Broke on them Kosa's beaming face : almost 
 Shrieked the daughters. Her countenance 
 Alight with spiritual beauty's fire, — 
 As one in heaven-transported trance 
 Listening to angelic quire, — 
 She approached the father, saying, 
 In voice atremble with humility, — 
 As were the soul's choice sparkle through it raying, 
 " Pardon, pardon me ! " 
 Astounded, mute, he gazed ; 
 Then humbly turning to his daughters mazed, 
 As he a life-wrong would confess 
 In tones of a strange tenderness, 
 He cried, " Forgive ! forgive ! forgive ! " 
 
ROSA. 71 
 
 Then noiseless left the room. 
 This is, to live, to live, 
 Inly said Rosa, as she felt the doom 
 Of tyranny was lifted. Their warm tears 
 
 Of a new joy mingled with hers 
 In close embrace, hers who had plucked the burs 
 That daily pricked their hearts with monstrous fears. 
 Rosa had sweetened a whole family's breath, 
 Had planted life where had been death. 
 
 Aye, humanly to live 
 
 Is not, to keep alert 
 The senses with befitting food ; 
 Is not, to make the corporal sieve, — 
 Which is but animated dirt, — 
 The end, it being a means to spiritual good ; 
 
 Is not, to flatter passion 
 
 With wasteful repetition 
 
 Of its subservient ration, 
 
72 ROSA. 
 
 To help hungry ambition 
 Up to its slippery heights, 
 To gather fruit that feeds 
 To plethora the greeds ; — 
 But 't is, to work so that the soul 
 Be ever splendent with the lights, 
 The consecrated lights, of love and duty, 
 Illumination that from pole to pole 
 Keeps the earth freshened with unearthly beauty. 
 To arrest a tear before it fall, 
 And make it glisten in a smile, 
 To antidote a sore heart's gall, 
 Efface with truth incipient guile, 
 
 Divert a threatening hate, 
 And harness it to draw with love, 
 And thus to substitute for Fate 
 A lordlier mandate from above ; 
 This is to brighten, vivify 
 Dear life, and lift it human high. 
 
FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 Like the two hands that knead our daily bread, 
 Nature and man should work with even will 
 And watchfulness, w T hen innocent childhood lifts 
 Its helpless palms and prayerful eyes, and prays 
 For love and wisdom in the guardianship 
 Of its young years. Nature is ever wise, 
 Watchful and active as th' unhalting Sun, 
 That warms and keeps alive all earthly being. 
 On man Nature outpours her choicest wealth ; 
 He is entrusted to her motherly love ; 
 Part of herself, and yet, greater than she, 
 Reflectively creative, he doth rise 
 Out of great Nature, and above her soars ; 
 
74 FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 For he hath wings of thought, procursive thought, 
 Wherewith, and manful will, he rules his own 
 And her resources vast. 
 
 Hale human babe 
 Is a potential deity on earth ; 
 Lord of the outward world, if he do grow 
 To be lord of himself. Deep Nature calls 
 On deeper man to mould an infant's powers 
 And inborn potencies, within man's sphere, 
 His boundless sphere, almost omnipotent. 
 Love and high reason are his master-gifts, 
 Empowering him to be like to a God. 
 Teach the loved child to know and love all things, — 
 Earthworms, that so beneficently work 
 Beneath the surface of the teemful soil, 
 Insects that buzz joyously through the air, 
 The bird who pipes a jubilant holiday 
 To tune man's heart into blithe harmony 
 
FOUNDATIONS. 75 
 
 With this all-quickening multitudinous life, 
 The obedient horse and ox that multiply 
 His strength a hundred-fold. Show him the San 
 Setting dim dawn ablaze with full-orbed light, 
 Higher and higher in benignant power 
 Mounting to bounteous hot magnificence. 
 Teach him no fear ; the ragef ul hurricane, 
 The thunderclap, let him not dread. Teach him 
 To shrink before rebuke, — even though it be 
 No louder than the faintest whisper's breath, — 
 That from his deepest sounds with sacred voice. 
 Within his inmost is a deathless spark, 
 Of fire to guide and rule. This is for him 
 The holy of holies. Here, in humble awe, 
 Let him oft hearken : thus hearkening, he 
 Is nearest to th' Almighty. When the stars 
 Look down on him, and he on them, is wrought 
 The chain that binds him to the supreme Mind : 
 
76 FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 These myriad eyes embrace him with their beams. 
 Like diamond, filling its quick heart with light 
 From the far sun, to glow with mingled fire, 
 Man's deep capacity for reverence 
 Swells to religious thought when midnight opes, 
 With shining stellar keys, Infinitude, 
 Deepening the moral beauty of his life. 
 
POETRY. 
 
 It is not in the trees or in the ocean, 
 Nor in the air or earth or spacious skies, 
 Nor in the forms of nature, or the motion 
 Of stream or fawn, not even in the eyes 
 Of woman : in the soul of man it lies, 
 This peerless, heavenly gift, creative power 
 That lights and consecrates all these, and plies 
 For man's uplifting in bright happiest hour 
 This dearest privilege and his divinest dower. 
 
CEASELESS CREATION. 
 
 The smile in the eye 
 Is born but to die. 
 The bud of the rose 
 Full blooms but to fade, 
 The faster it grows 
 The sooner 't is dead. 
 The mother's delight 
 At day-break is born, 
 'T is dead ere the night 
 Of the next gloomy morn : 
 The father, he strains 
 Through turmoil and strife ; 
 Mid bafflings and pains 
 
CEASELESS CREATION. 79 
 
 Death swallows his life. 
 Life 's all a dream, 
 Death is a sleep, 
 And joy but a gleam, 
 While trouble we keep. 
 
 Put out the great light 
 Of faith and of hope, — 
 In the darkness of night 
 You ever will grope ; 
 For hope and dear faith 
 Are the sun of the soul : 
 'T is your blindness that saith 
 All is dark, — like the mole. 
 
 The smile in the eye, 
 
 It never can die ; 
 
 From the soul 't is a flash 
 
80 CEASELESS CREATION. 
 
 That in joy will survive 
 
 The gloom and the crash 
 
 Of this earthly hive. 
 
 A soul hath the rose 
 
 That renews its bright birth : 
 
 Perennial it blows 
 
 To sweeten the earth. 
 
 As star lost in day, 
 
 The babe hath been won 
 
 By glory of ray 
 
 Outshining the sun. 
 
 The mother's blind eyes 
 
 Can't see its ascent, 
 
 As with saddest sighs 
 
 Her bosom is rent. 
 
 The babe comes down to her, 
 
 With kisses doth woo her, 
 
 With tenderest greeting 
 
CEASELESS CREATION. 81 
 
 Whispers heavenly meeting. 
 The father, he meets it 
 (With a new sight he 's blest), 
 In wonderment greets it, 
 From earth-toils at rest. 
 
 Life 's not a mere dreaming, 
 'T is rather a beaming 
 From million-fold fire, 
 Each kindled and signed 
 By the infinite Mind, 
 Each aye straining higher. 
 Creative is life, 
 A ceaseless creation, 
 A getting things rife 
 For endless mutation. 
 For change is its law 
 „ And motion its joyance; 
 
82 CEASELESS CREATION. 
 
 Its flow hath no flaw, 
 And it lives upon buoyance. 
 When once 't is in being 
 It never can cease ; 
 Delight of th' Allseeing, 
 Eternal its lease. 
 
SKETCHES. 
 
 Between curved eyebrows and her auburn hair 
 
 A smooth white forehead shone, 
 Like finest Parian glistening in the glare 
 Of genius' handwork, as, all alone 
 In beauty, flash the Paphian's wondrous limbs. 
 The silken evebrows arch above 
 Soft eyes aglow with love, 
 So warm, their lustre it bedims. 
 A Cupid's bow are her two lips, 
 So sweet, each of the other sips 
 Moisture to make itself the sweeter. 
 In cheek and dimpled chin, small oval ear, 
 Is nothing to defeat her 
 Dazzling, quick-conquering charm. A leer 
 
84 SKETCHES. 
 
 Quailed before all this beauty, which 
 Bounded her neck, then slid 
 Lower, so fresh and rich 
 Itself it quickly hid 
 
 (Like virtue from a wicked world 
 
 Or fear before a flag unfurled) 
 
 'Neath kerchief, laces and like covers, 
 
 Delicate provocatives to lovers. 
 
 But for this hiding, the far-famed 
 
 Greek Helen's bosom had been shamed. 
 
 These beauties are beauties, and great ; 
 But they are for joyance, not sorrow, 
 For early years, not for the late, 
 For to-day, and not for to-morrow ; 
 They are shallow, they cannot be deep, 
 Beauties when you can laugh, not when you weep. 
 They wither too soon and grow cold, 
 And die before they are old. 
 
SKETCHES. 35 
 
 While admiration of a manly nose 
 
 And eyes cerulean blue, 
 O'erhung by eyebrows lightly brown, 
 Mounts towards climax on th' ivory hue 
 Of forehead with smooth wavy crown, 
 
 And in its rapture knows 
 Not where to pause,— all features melt 
 
 In a transfiguring light, 
 
 Which, like the sacred belt 
 Of halo, quickens blessed sight. 
 From deathless inward beauty sprang 
 
 That belt of holy brightness, 
 Beauty of feelings, thoughts, that rang 
 With echoes from the soul of rightness. 
 Mere outward human beauty is a mask, 
 An empty, perishable cask. 
 Because within his brain are born 
 Powers angelic, given to bloom 
 
86 SKETCHES. 
 
 In spheres higher than this, his earthly morn, 
 Man's compact countenance has the room 
 For supreme beauty, variousness and life. 
 Before a face and head thus nobly bright 
 Joyed admiration rose to fullest height, 
 Beholding great humanity so rife. 
 
 Th' unconscious holder of such gifts 
 
 And beauties rapturously gazed 
 
 Upon the loveliness that blazed 
 Beneath that auburn hair. 
 
 'T was not the beauty that uplifts, 
 
 Fresh as it was and rapturing fair. 
 He looked and passed ; for him here was no mate. 
 Corporeal loveliness was not his bait. 
 A life-partner waited his coming, splendid 
 
 From glow of feminine beauty blended 
 Of purest innocence 
 
 And rich emotion's reach, with sense 
 So broadly masculine, 
 
SKETCHES. 87 
 
 It lay beneath her feeling's nobleness 
 Like whitest marble of an Apennine, 
 Which Angelo's sure hand is to caress, 
 Beneath the fervent opulence and grace 
 Of flower and foliage on great Italy's fair face. 
 
NO END. 
 
 There is no end : Eternity 
 Seizes each atom, and to be 
 
 Involves unceasing growth. 
 Mind quickens all : 
 
 To die were rotting sloth, 
 Hateful impossible impotence. 
 Life tendeth upward, and to fall 
 
 Is but a seeming, whence 
 
 Uprise again all things : 
 Mind, their great mother, lendeth wings. 
 Heart-beats cease not within the tomb : 
 The " spiritual body " quits dissolving flesh, 
 And far above a fleshly doom 
 
NO END. 89 
 
 Carries the soul's unceasing throb to fresh 
 
 And higher planes of being. 
 
 Life, in its million shapes, 
 
 Is an incessant fleeing 
 From outworn moulds to new ; escapes 
 
 From matter's bonds, ascending 
 
 Through infinite degrees, 
 Creating and effacing, rending 
 
 Material forms with th' ease 
 
 Of spirit-mastership, 
 
 Aye razing to rebuild, 
 Through instantaneous power to equip 
 With its deep inwardness all atoms, filled 
 Thereby with an instinctive need 
 
 Of nursing every seed 
 Planted by overruling Mind. 
 
 Mysterious Mind lends eyes 
 To all things, even to what seems blind, 
 To comets in the boundless skies, 
 
90 NO END. 
 
 Nor less to molecules that creep 
 
 Through th' universe, upbuilding it, 
 
 Mightiest of instruments, that heap 
 Life upon life, and fit 
 
 Parts to their place in grandest wholes, 
 
 Obedient to primordial Will. 
 Mind launches thus infinitude of souls, 
 The purposes of being to fulfill, 
 Mind's mighty power and splendor aye attended 
 By thoughts of perfectness, so interblended 
 
 With mind's own essence, that they glow 
 
 Twin sovereign lights, — perennial bow 
 
 Of promise, over all supreme. 
 
 Immeasurably bright and pure, 
 They waken in all creatures soaring dream, 
 
 And thereby all forever lure 
 
 Upward towards better, higher, 
 Inflaming all with quenchless, holy fire. 
 
OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Beauty is so deep 't is one with life, 
 And no imaginative knife 
 Can part their threads, close intertwined 
 By primal generative Mind. 
 Nay, Beauty might be called the life of being, 
 Primordial essence bright, 
 
 Aye, very soul of the all-decreeing, 
 Original, creative, holy Might. — 
 
 Sea-shells come up from the salt sea, 
 Sprinkling fresh beauty through their eyes, 
 Iridescent interfusedly ; 
 
 With gleam of sea-dipped dyes, 
 And th' infinite grace of varying curves, 
 
92 OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Refining, soothing tenderest nerves. 
 With what delight of recognition 
 We greet the peeping leaf-buds green, 
 
 Into life's first fruition 
 Bursting in multitudinous sheen, 
 With unslaked thirstiness 
 Drinking the sweetened air, 
 Reveling in the sun's warm caress, 
 Outgushed so numerous, broad, and fair, 
 They make the forest's grandeur vast. 
 And now they are past, fallen, gone to enrich the roots 
 That nourished them. But Beauty is not past. 
 Instead of leaves, from each tree shoots 
 
 Radiance, as though the sun 
 Had showered stars among the branches : 
 But for an hour • at noon are none, — 
 Melted by the same might that launches, 
 Even in winter, heated arrows. Lo ! 
 In a night Beauty re-assumes 
 
OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 93 
 
 His sway, sheeting with snow 
 Each twig and limb : the forest looms, 
 
 In the calm morning light, 
 A wondrous maze of sparkling white. 
 Again the sap reflows, and floods 
 The earth with leafy green. 
 A twofold beauty is in the woods, 
 A vocal rivaling the seen ! 
 Music of a transcendant quire, 
 Cadence unreached by instrument or words, 
 Sweet improvisation, straining higher, 
 In the melodious worshiping of birds 
 At dawn, spontaneous anthem, rich and pure, 
 
 Mounting to Heaven whence it came, 
 To man's devotion timely overture, 
 
 Waking religious joy without a name. 
 From rivulet to river, 
 From cataract to dew, 
 From lakelet's shore to ocean's, 
 
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OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 95 
 
 Inseparable from life, one are their laws : 
 Beauty is the gold in life's ore. 
 The highest we can know 
 Is human life ; in man 
 Beauty's great lessons glow 
 Their deepest, in the van 
 Of all corporeal being. 
 His body, what a wonder ! 
 Earth's supreme beauty, all o'erseeing, 
 Majestic more than any creature under 
 Heaven's cope ; superlatively framed 
 For strength, and spring, and grace, 
 Alone erect, by heat or cold untamed, 
 In his compact, far-looking, listening face 
 Form and expressiveness unmatched. 
 Behind upreaching forehead bold, — 
 As Heaven's best will had been unlatched, 
 And let loose potencies untold, — 
 That mighty product lies, the human brain, 
 
96 OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 The miracle of miracles, the seat 
 
 Of Mind ; Mind which, once growing, never wanes, 
 
 But action follows its eternal beat. 
 
 Mind ! Through those sun-shaped orbs, the eyes, 
 
 Lightens this mightiness ! 
 Behind in awful silence lies 
 The tool of puissance only less 
 Than high omnipotence, — 
 Puissance of such a might 
 That should it rend its ordained continents 
 Before its glare would pale all light 
 Of suns, and to a whisper sink 
 The tropic thunderburst. 
 But on this fearful brink 
 We stand safe and assured. We are not curst 
 By primal power : we are blest 
 By a divine beneficence, 
 Potent to subject all to law's behest, 
 Wielding 'gainst chaos absolute defense. 
 
OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 97 
 
 And this quick instrument of soul, 
 This master-mass of matter superfine? 
 This vivid brain, is only great as whole 
 Through self-subsistent parts that all combine 
 
 In rhythmical subordination, 
 Its maker, Mind, with the lower organs holding 
 
 The infinite details of creation, 
 
 With the highest in its grasp enfolding 
 
 The largest, deepest, thought and feeling, 
 
 The grandeur and the reach of Man, 
 His splendent possibilities revealing, 
 Therewith divinist beauty, purpose, plan. 
 
 The nearer we to spiritual sources, 
 
 The fuller, subtler, is the unfolding 
 Of Beauty's life. Man with his earthly forces 
 
 Gets only glimpses bright, beholding, 
 Through deep, inspiring sensibilities, 
 Resplendent tokens, signs, 
 
98 OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Of what the supreme wisdom is 
 
 In its beneficent designs. 
 On earth man could easier the sun outstare 
 Than front, unblasted, Beauty's heavenliest glare.