thee,But there be laws in force on high
Which say it must not be.”
II
—“I would not freeze thee, shorn one,” cried
The North, “knew I but how
To warm my breath, to slack my stride;
But I am ruled as thou.”
III
—“To-morrow I attack thee, wight,”
Said Sickness. “Yet I swear
I bear thy little ark no spite,
But am bid enter there.”
IV
—“Come hither, Son,” I heard Death say;
“I did not will a grave
Should end thy pilgrimage to-day,
But I, too, am a slave!”
V
We smiled upon each other then,
And life to me wore less
That fell contour it wore ere when
They owned their passiveness.
The Sleep-Worker
When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see—
As one who, held in trance, has laboured long
By vacant rote and prepossession strong—
The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly;
Wherein have place, unrealized by thee,
Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong,
Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song,
And curious blends of ache and ecstasy?—
Should that morn come, and show thy opened eyes
All that Life’s palpitating tissues feel,
How wilt thou bear thyself in thy surprise?—
Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame,
Thy whole high heaving firmamental frame,
Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal?
The Bullfinches
Brother Bulleys, let us sing
From the dawn till evening!—
For we know not that we go not
When the day’s pale pinions fold
Unto those who sang of old.
When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,
Whence the green-gowned faeries hail,
Roosting near them I could hear them
Speak of queenly Nature’s ways,
Means, and moods,—well known to fays.
All we creatures, nigh and far
(Said they there), the Mother’s are:
Yet she never shows endeavour
To protect from warrings wild
Bird or beast she calls her child.
Busy in her handsome house
Known as Space, she falls a-drowse;
Yet, in seeming, works on dreaming,
While beneath her groping hands
Fiends make havoc in her bands.
How her hussif’ry succeeds
She unknows or she unheeds,
All things making for Death’s taking!
—So the green-gowned faeries say
Living over Blackmoor way.
Come then, brethren, let us sing,
From the dawn till evening!—
For we know not that we go not
When the day’s pale pinions fold
Unto those who sang of old.
God-Forgotten
I towered far, and lo! I stood within
The presence of the Lord Most High,
Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win
Some answer to their cry.
—“The Earth, say’st thou? The Human race?
By Me created? Sad its lot?
Nay: I have no remembrance of such place:
Such world I fashioned not.”—
—“O Lord, forgive me when I say
Thou spak’st the word, and mad’st it all.”—
“The Earth of men—let me bethink me . . . Yea!
I dimly do recall
“Some tiny sphere I built long back
(Mid millions of such shapes of mine)
So named . . . It perished, surely—not a wrack
Remaining, or a sign?
“It lost my interest from the first,
My aims therefor succeeding ill;
Haply it died of doing as it durst?”—
