In the dread joy and fury of the fight.
I am with those who win, not those who fly;
With those who live I am, not those who die.
Who die? Nay, nay, that word
Where I am is unheard;

For I am the spirit of youth that cannot change,

Nor cease, nor suffer woe;

And I am the spirit of beauty that doth range

Through natural forms and motions, and each show

Of outward loveliness. With me have birth All gentleness and joy in all the earth. Raphael knew me, and showed the world my face;

Me Homer knew, and all the singing race, For I am the spirit of light, and life, and mirth.

THE CELESTIAL PASSION

O WHITE and midnight sky! O starry bath!

Wash me in thy pure, heavenly, crystal flood;

Cleanse me, ye stars, from earthly soil and scath;

Let not one taint remain in spirit or blood! Receive my soul, ye burning, awful deeps; Touch and baptize me with the mighty

power

That in ye thrills, while the dark planet sleeps;

Make me all yours for one blest, secret

hour!

O glittering host! O high angelic choir!
Silence each tone that with thy music jars;
Fill me even as an urn with thy white fire
Till all I am is kindred to the stars!
Make me thy child, thou infinite, holy
night

So shall my days be full of heavenly light!

I COUNT MY TIME BY TIMES THAT I MEET THEE

I COUNT my time by times that I meet thee;

These are my yesterdays, my morrows,

noons,

And nights; these my old moons and my

new moons.

Slow fly the hours, or fast the hours do flee,

If thou art far from or art near to me:
If thou art far, the bird tunes are no tunes;
If thou art near, the wintry days are
Junes,

Darkness is light, and sorrow cannot be. Thou art my dream come true, and thou my dream;

The air I breathe, the world wherein I dwell;

My journey's end thou art, and thou the

way;

Thou art what I would be, yet only seem ; Thou art my heaven and thou art my hell;

Thou art my ever-living judgment-day.

A precious jewel carved most curiously;
It is a little picture painted well.
What is a sonnet? T is the tear that fell
From a great poet's hidden ecstasy;

A two-edged sword, a star, a song, — ah me!

Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell. This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath,

The solemn organ whereon Milton played, And the clear glass where Shakespeare's shadow falls:

A sea this is, beware who ventureth!
For like a fiord the narrow floor is laid
Mid-ocean deep to the sheer mountain walls.

EVENING IN TYRINGHAM VALLEY

WHAT domes and pinnacles of mist and

fire

Are builded in yon spacious realms of light

All silently, as did the walls aspire Templing the ark of God by day and night!

Noiseless and swift, from darkening ridge to ridge,

Through purple air that deepens down the day,

Over the valley springs a shadowy bridge. The evening star's keen, solitary ray Makes more intense the silence, and the glad,

Unmelancholy, restful, twilight gloomSo full of tenderness, that even the sad Remembrances that haunt the soul take bloom

Like that on yonder mountain.

Now the bars

Of sunset all burn black; the day doth fail,

And the skies whiten with the eternal stars. Oh, let thy spirit stay with me, sweet vale!

SHERMAN

GLORY and honor and fame and everlasting laudation

For our captains who loved not war, but fought for the life of the nation; Who knew that, in all the land, one slave meant strife, not peace;

Who fought for freedom, not glory; made war that war might cease.

Glory and honor and fame; the beating of muffled drums;

The wailing funeral dirge, as the flagwrapped coffin comes;

Fame and honor and glory; and joy for a noble soul,

For a full and splendid life, and laurelled rest at the goal.

Glory and honor and fame; the pomp that a soldier prizes;

The league-long waving line as the marching falls and rises;

Rumbling of caissons and guns; the clatter of horses' feet,

And a million awe-struck faces far down the waiting street.

I rather felt than heard
The song of that lone bird:
Yes, I have heard the nightingale.

Yes, I have heard the nightingale.
I heard it, and I followed;
The warm night swallowed
This soul and body of mine,
As burning thirst takes wine,
While on and on I pressed
Close to that singing breast:
Yes, I have heard the nightingale.

Yes, I have heard the nightingale.
Well doth each throbbing ember
The flame remember;

And I, how quick that sound Turned drops from a deep wound! How this heart was the thorn Which pierced that breast forlorn! Yes, I have heard the nightingale.

With flowers at her maiden breast? - Helen, here is a book of song

From the poet who loves you best.

ABSOLUTION

I

PRIEST of God, unto thee I come;

Day doth dawn, though the mist lies deep. Trembling with dread from my home I fled; I have slain a man in the land of sleep.

Him I met in a region dim,

Where ever the sun shines faint and low, Where the moon is far as a tiny star, And rivers speed with a noiseless flow.

In the tangled wood he was lying hid; But I saw him lurking, and then I knew 'Twas the soul of the one since time begun That had made me false when I would be true.

My heart was hot and my anger fierce;
I knew in my dreaming his life I sought.
But with all my power, as I saw him cower,
I willed the deed that my hands have
wrought.

Ask me not if his name I know,
For all the rest of my dream is hid;
I only remember the river's flow,
And the dim gray light and the deed I did.

But demons of death and hate that wait
For the soul that sins, my soul pursue,
And my hands are red with the blood of
the dead,

And ever they cry the long hours through:

"Murderer, though in dreams and sleep, Done is the deed with thy soul's consent, And there is no hope for Heaven's gate to ope,

Nor will men have pity nor God relent."

II

Son, no sin on thy soul doth rest;
Blood shows not on thy trembling hands.
Unto thee can cling no awful thing;
Thy soul was roaming in unreal lands.

"T was but a dream when all things seem
Mingled with fantasy strange and wild,
And the soul of man, do the worst it can,
Is sinless in slumber and undefiled.

For life is the life of the waking day;
Time enough in it for crime and sin.
But we sleep in the hours, like the sinless
flowers

That heed not the world and its maddening din.

III

Out from the living, O God, I creep,
Naked and chill, to thy silent land;
Friend have I none, I stand alone,
To wait my doom at thy mighty hand.
Naked and chill, though wrapped in sin,
In the dark and cold with only thee,
Nor glint of a star that's faint and far,
To light the night of thy world for me.

Whither, O God, wilt thou send the soul Thou hast planted on earth and plucked away?

For it grew, with the weeds of its evil

deeds,

In the wood and fen, in the mire and clay.

IV

Child of the earth, thou fragile flower Bending down to the wind that blew, Life shall seem but an evil dream; Wake to the life that is real and true.

Cease thy dreaming, the world forget;
Lulled be the pain I made thee bear.
Sin and shame are only the name
Of the lesson I taught thee in sorrow
there.

Thou hast learned how the soul of man
Lifts, through error, its heart on high,
Up from the sin I placed it in,

To the bright, clear light in the starry sky.

Ages hence, when thy world and stars
Fade away in the mist they are,
Thou shalt weep, and in pity creep
Back to the life of some lonely star.

Love shall well in thy heart, and tears
Fall for the sorrows thou couldst not know
But for the years of sins and fears
Spent in the dream of thy life below.