SONNET LXV. KNOWN IN VAIN. As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope, The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd For hours are silent :-So it happeneth When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze After their life sailed by, and hold their breath. Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze Thenceforth their incommunicable ways Follow the desultory feet of Death? SONNET LXVI. THE HEART OF THE NIGHT. FROM child to youth; from youth to arduous man; From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart; Till now. Alas, the soul !-how soon must she O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life! This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death! SONNET LXVII. THE LANDMARK. Was that the landmark? What, —the foolish well But lo! the path is missed, I must go back, And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring Which once I stained, which since may have grown black. Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening, That the same goal is still on the same track. SONNET LXVIII. A DARK DAY. THE gloom that breathes upon me with these airs Or hath but memory of the day whose plough How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth, Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed. SONNET LXIX. AUTUMN IDLENESS. THIS Sunlight shames November where he grieves The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun, Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves. Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic glass; Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the dew; Till eve bring rest when other good things pass. And here the lost hours the lost hours renew While I still lead my shadow o'er the grass, Nor know, for longing, that which I should do. SONNET LXX. THE HILL SUMMIT. THIS feast-day of the sun, his altar there And gaze now a belated worshipper. Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware, Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,— And now that I have climbed and won this height, And travel the bewildered tracks till night. Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed And the last bird fly into the last light. SONNETS LXXI., LXXII., LXXIII. THE CHOICE. I. EAT thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die. May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high, We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are toll'd, Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky. Now kiss, and think that there are really those, Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way! Through many years they toil; then on a day They die not,-for their life was death,-but cease; And round their narrow lips the mould falls close. II. WATCH thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die. The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh III. THINK thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die. Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore, Thou say'st: "Man's measured path is all gone o'er : Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb until he touched the truth; and I, How should this be? Art thou then so much more Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby? Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me; Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd. Miles and miles distant though the last line be, And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,— Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea. SONNETS LXXIV., LXXV., LXXVI. OLD AND NEW ART. I. ST. LUKE THE PAINTER. GIVE honor unto Luke Evangelist; She looked through these to God and was God's priest. And if, past noon, her toil began to irk, And she sought talismans, and turned in vain II. NOT AS THESE. "I AM not as these are," the poet saith |