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Sky of the senses! on which height,
Not disconnected, yet released,
They see how spirit comes to light,
Through conquest of the inner beast,
Which Measure tames to movement sane,
In harmony with what is fair.
Never is Earth misread by brain:
That is the welling of her, there
The mirror with one step beyond, 85
For likewise is it voice. And more:
Benignest kinship bids respond
When wail the weak, and them restore
Whom days as fell as this may rive,
While Earth sits ebon in her gloom,
Us atomies of life alive
Unheeding, bent on life to come.
Her children of the laboring brain,
These are the champions of the race,
True parents, and the sole humane,
With understanding for their base.
Earth yields the milk, but all her mind
Is vowed to thresh for stouter stock.
Her passion for old giantkind,
That scaled the mount, uphurled the
rock,

Devolves on them who read aright
Her meaning, and devoutly serve;
Nor in her starlessness of night
Peruse her with the craven nerve:
But even as she from grass to corn,
To eagle high from grubbing mole, -
Prove in strong brain her noblest born,
The station for the flight of soul.

THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH (1901)

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If that thou hast the gift of strength, then

know

Thy part is to uplift the trodden low;
Else in a giant's grasp, until the end,
A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.

Is that, think you, our ending? We follow many, more we lead;

And you who sadly turf us, Believe not that all living seed Must flower above the surface. Sensation is a gracious gift; But were it cramped to station, The prayer to have it cast adrift Would spout from all sensation. Enough if we have winked to sun, Have sped the plough a season: There is a soul for labor done, Endureth fixed as reason.

Then let our trust be firm in Good,
Though we be of the fasting:

Our questions are a mortal brood,
Our work is everlasting.

We children of Beneficence

Are in its being sharers;

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night,

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south

They gathered as unto strife: They breathed upon his mouth,

They filled his body with life; Eyesight and speech they wrought For the veils of the soul therein; A time for labor and thought,

A time to serve and to sin. They gave him light in his ways, And love, and a space for delight,

And beauty and length of days,

And night, and sleep in the night. His speech is a burning fire;

With his lips he travaileth;

In his heart is a blind desire,

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They wot not who make thither. But no such winds blow hither, And no such things grow here;

No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine:
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine, -
Pale beds of blowing rushes,
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.

Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;

And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated

Comes out of darkness morn.

Though one were strong as seven,

He too with death shall dwell, Nor wake with wings in heaven, Nor weep for pains in hell; Though one were fair as roses, His beauty clouds and closes; And well though love reposes, In the end it is not well.

Pale, beyond porch and portal,

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Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown gray from thy breath: We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fulness of death. Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;

But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.

Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the

world is not sweet in the end; For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend. Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;

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But her ears are vexed with the roar, and her face with the foam, of the tides.

All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast

Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past: Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates, Waste water washes, and tall ships

founder, and deep death waits: 50 Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings, And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things, White-eyed and poisonous-finned, sharktoothed and serpentine-curled, Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world. The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;

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In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;

In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears; With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years;

With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour.

And bitter as blood is the spray; and the