SONNET LXV.

KNOWN IN VAIN.

As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
Knows suddenly, to music high and soft,

The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd
Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope;
Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laugh'd
In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft
Together, within hopeless sight of hope

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 lethargy to fever of the heart;

From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;
From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban ;-
Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran

Till now.

Alas, the soul !-how soon must she
Accept her primal immortality,-
The flesh resume its dust whence it began?

O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath:
That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
The work retrieved, the will regenerate,

This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!

SONNET LXVII.

THE LANDMARK.

Was that the landmark? What, —the foolish well
Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink,
But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink
In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell,
(And mine own image, had I noted well!) —
Was that my point of turning?—I had thought
The stations of my course should rise unsought,
As altar-stone or ensigned citadel.

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
Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow
Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now
Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,

Or hath but memory of the day whose plough
Sowed hunger once, the night at length when thou,
O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?

How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,
Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe !
Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead
Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,

Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.

SONNET LXIX.

AUTUMN IDLENESS.

THIS Sunlight shames November where he grieves
In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun
The day, though bough with bough be over-run.
But with a blessing every glade receives
High salutation; while from hillock-eaves

The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun,
As if, being foresters of old, the sun

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
In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
And I have loitered in the vale too long

And gaze now a belated worshipper.

Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
So journeying, of his face at intervals

Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,—
A fiery bush with coruscating hair.

And now that I have climbed and won this height,
I must tread downward through the sloping shade

And travel the bewildered tracks till night.

Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
And see the gold air and the silver fade

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.
Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I

May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.

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,
My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase

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.
Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
Is not the day which God's word promiseth
To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth can I
Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
Even at this moment haply quickeneth

The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?
Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.

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,
Even I, am he whom it was destined for.”

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;
For he it was (the aged legends say)
Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
Are symbols also in some deeper way,

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
To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,-
Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
Ere the night cometh and she may not work.

II. NOT AS THESE.

"I AM not as these are," the poet saith
In youth's pride, and the painter, among men
At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen,
And shut about with his own frozen breath.