To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith
As poets,-only paint as painters,—then
He turns in the cold silence; and again
Shrinking, "I am not as these are," he saith.
And say that this is so, what follows it?

For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head, Such words were well; but they see on, and far. Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit

Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead,—
Say thou instead, "I am not as these are."

III. THE HUSBANDMEN.

THOUGH God, as one that is an householder,
Called these to labor in his vineyard first,
Before the husk of darkness was well burst
Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
(Who, questioned of their wages, answered, "Sir,
Unto each man a penny: ") though the worst
Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst:
Though God hath since found none such as these were
To do their work like them :-Because of this
Stand not ye idle in the market-place.

Which of ye knoweth he is not that last
Who may be fir by faith and will?-yea, his
The hand which after the appointed days

And hours shall give a Future to their Past?

SONNET LXXVII.

SOUL'S BEAUTY.

UNDER the arch of Life, where Love and death,
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,

I drew it in as simply as my breath.

Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,

The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw, By sea or sky or woman, to one law,

The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.

This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise

Thy voice and hand shake still,-long known to thee By flying hair and fluttering hem, the beat Following her daily of thy heart and feet,

How passionately and irretrievably,

In what fond flight, how many ways and days!

SONNET LXXVIII.

BODY'S BEAUTY.

OF Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told

(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,) That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, And her enchanted hair was the first gold.

And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
And, subtly of herself contemplative,

Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,

Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his ight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling den hair.

SONNET LXXIX.

THE MONOCHORD.

Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound
That is Life's self and draws my life from me,
And by instinct ineffable decree

Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?
Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd,
That 'mid the tide of all emergency

Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
Its difficult eddies labor in the ground?

Oh! what is this that knows the road I came,
The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,
The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?—
That draws round me at last this wind-warm space,
And in regenerate rapture turns my face
Upon the devious coverts of dismay?

SONNET LXXX.

FROM DAWN TO NOON.

As the child knows not if his mother's face
Be fair; nor of his elders yet can deem
What each most is; but as of hill or stream
At dawn, all glimmering life surrounds his place :
Who yet, tow'rd noon of his half-weary race,

Pausing awhile beneath the high sun-beam

And gazing steadily back,—as through a dream, In things long past new features now can trace :—

Even so the thought that is at length fullgrown

Turns back to note the sun-smit paths, all gray And marvellous once, where first it walked alone ; And haply doubts, amid the unblenching day, Which most or least impelled its onward way,— Those unknown things or these things overknown.

SONNET LXXXI.

MEMORIAL THRESHOLDS.

WHAT place so strange,-though unrevealed snow
With unimaginable fires arise

At the earth's end,-what passion of surprise
Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago?
Lo! this is none but I this hour; and lo!
This is the very place which to mine eyes
Those mortal hours in vain immortalize,
'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know.

City, of thine a single simple door,

By some new Power reduplicate, must be
Even yet my life-porch in eternity,

Even with one presence filled, as once of yore:
Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor
Thee and thy years and these my words and me.

SONNET LXXXII.

HOARDED JOY.

I SAID: "Nay, pluck not,-let the first fruit be:
Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red,

But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head
Sees in the stream its own fecundity
And bides the-day of fulness.

Shall not we

At the sun's hour that day possess the shade, And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade, And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?”

I say:

"Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun

Too long, 't is fallen and floats adown the stream. Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one,

And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam
Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free,
And the woods wail like echoes from the sea."

SONNET LXXXIII.

BARREN SPRING.

ONCE more the changed year's turning wheel returns : And as a girl sails balanced in the wind,

And now before and now again behind

Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns,-
So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns.

Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;

This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art. Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them, Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.

SONNET LXXXIV.

FAREWELL TO THE GLEN.

SWEET stream-fed glen, why say

"farewell" to thee

Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth

The brow of Time where man may read no ruth? Nay, do thou rather say "farewell" to me,

Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy

Than erst was mine where other shade might soothe By other streams, what while in fragrant youth The bliss of being sad made melancholy.

And yet, farewell! For better shalt thou fare
When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow
And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there
In hours to come, than when an hour ago
Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear
And thy trees whispered what he feared to know.

SONNET LXXXV.

VAIN VIRTUES.

WHAT is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
None of the sins,-but this and that fair deed
Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.
These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell
Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves
Of anguish, while the pit's pollution leaves
Their refuse maidenhood abominable.