And pictured, borne on fancy's wings,
The end of all created things.

Then have I seen with dreaming eye,
The blue depths of the vaulted sky
Rent without noise; and in their stead
A wonder-world of fancy spread,

A golden city, with domes and spires,
Lit by a strange sun's mystic fires.
Portals of dazzling chrysolite,

Long colonnades of purest white;

Streets paved with gold and jewels rare;
And higher, in the ambient air,

A shining Presence undefined:
Swift seraphs stooping swift as wind
From pole to pole, and that vast throng
Which peopled Dante's world of song ;
The last great inquest, which shall close
The tale of human joys and woes;
The dreadful Judge, the opening tomb,
And all the mystery of doom.

Then woke to find the vision vain,

And sun or moon shine calm again.

No longer, save in memory's glass,

These vanished visions come and pass;
The clearer light of fuller day

Has chased these earlier dreams away.
Faith's eye grows dim with too much light,
And fancy flies our clearer sight.

But shall we mourn her day is o'er,
That these rapt visions come no more?
Nay; knowledge has its splendours too,
Brighter than Fancy's brightest hue.
I gaze now on the heavens, and see
How, midst their vast immensity,
By cosmic laws the planets roll,
Sped onwards by a central soul;
How farther still, and still more far,
World beyond world, star beyond star,

So many, and so far, that speech

And thought must fail the sum to reach.

This universe of nature teems

With things more strange than fancy's dreams;

And so at length, with clearer eye,

Soar beyond childhood's painted sky,

Up to the Lord of great and small,

Not onewhere, but pervading all :
Who made the music of the spheres,
And yet inclines an ear that hears
The faintest prayer, the humblest sigh,
The strong man's groan, the childish cry :
Who guides the stars, yet without whom
No humblest floweret comes to bloom,
No lowliest creature comes to birth,

No dead leaf flutters to the earth:
Who breathed into our souls the breath,
Which neither time nor change nor death,
Nor hurtling suns at random hurled
And dashed together, world on world,

Can ever kill or quench, till He

Bends down, and bids them not to be.

BABYLON.

THIS is Great Babylon that is builded; Mark well her domes and towers of pride,

The throng in her long streets fair and wide, Her gleaming palaces gilded.

Mark her well for what she is now.

A little time since, where she stands to-day, No foot-step stirred on the desolate gray, Nor keel on her dull river's flow.

A place of foulness and shame and sorrow,

Where men sit at feasts while their brethren perish; Where young lives, left lonely with none to cherish, Grow ripe for a shameful morrow;

Of lofty aims and saintly endeavour,
Of pure souls waging continual strife,
Fierce as the conflict of death with life,
With the wrong that is done for ever;

Of careless lives lost in pursuit of pleasure,
Wasted, yet missing the end which they sought;

Of calm days yielded to patient thought,

Adding something to man's great treasure.

Mark her well, for the mystery-play

Will be played out ere long, as others before; And then the dead river will steal on once more Through sad plains silent and gray.

DOUBT.

WHO but has seen

Once in his life, when youth and health ran high,

The fair, clear face of truth

Grow dark to his eye?

Who but has known

Cold mists of doubt and icy questionings

Creep round him like a nightmare, blotting out The sight of better things.

A hopeless hour,

When all the voices of the soul are dumb,

When o'er the tossing seas

No light may come,

When God and right

Are gone, and seated on the empty throne

Are dull philosophies and words of wind,
Making His praise their own.

Better than this,

The burning sins of youth, the greed of age,

Than thus to live inane;

To sit and read,