[The two longest poems in this volume, and several other pieces, have not been printed before. For permission to publish the rest, my acknowledgments are due to the proprietors of The Spectator, Good Words, The Contemporary Review, The National Review, and Macmillan's Magazine.]

(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.)

953 A379 sai

I very well know that he who would write anything in verse likely to live must surrender himself to verse passionately and almost undividedly; for poetry is as exacting as she is beautiful. And indeed there was for myself a time, very long ago, when I was near believing that I had a call to consecrate myself to the sacred muse; that I might possibly become one of the brethren who prophesy with harps, and are instructed in the songs of the Lord. But a summons which I could not resist made me, to my surprise, a governor of the sanctuary and of the house of God. Yet even now, late in my troubled day, I look back to my former purpose. And here I gather together fragments mostly which (with three or four exceptions) I have had no sufficient time either to conceive deeply or to finish even after the measure of my own poor powers. Some, I already know, care for the things such as they are, and think them not altogether worthy of death. Perhaps God may enable me to say in the sweeter dialect dear to me long ago some things which I have failed to say in prose. If so, I shall thank Him from my heart. If not, the Church and the world will suffer no great wrong from me; and, for myself, I do not much fear a whiff of sarcasm and the painless punishment of oblivion.

161

I.

TO ROBERT JOCELYN ALEXANDER.*

SUSPECTED all my life of poetry,

I come at last and make confession here.
Late, late, my son! in the autumn of my year,
I gather up my sheaves that scatter'd lie,—
Some faint far light of immortality

Falling upon my field, and the severe
Relentless winds whistling into mine ear-
"Gather thou up thy sheaves before thou die."
Sheaves at that word I think of Israel's meadow
And valleys thick with corn. And on my lid
A proud tear trembles, as on his there did.
"These are my sheaves that rest, each on its shadow;
And all, along their little golden line,

Make their obeisance, O my son, to thine.

2.

Essayest thou, poet of a long-past morn,

A new forth-pouring of song's waves to try,

Song's wither'd blooms again on the fanes to tie?

Time was when from thy thought those waves seem'd

borne

* See “Ishmael," by Robert Jocelyn Alexander, p. 219.

+ Gen. xxxvii. 7.

Sunlit at once and strong, splendidly torn,

Their very fall a flash of victory.

Time was thy flowers were fresh as the morning sky,

To thee, perchance to others—now a scorn.
Two or three fibrous skeleton-leaves with story
Of some sweet summer day and things that died-
Two or three yellow foam-flakes for the glory,
Two or three bubbles for the big brimm'd tide.
- What if flowers breathe again before God's shrine,
Waves sound sonorous on a strand divine?

3.

I never yet heard music howe'er sweet,
Never saw flower or light, ocean or hill,
But a quick thought of something finer still
Touch'd me with sadness. Never did I meet
Completest beauty but was incomplete,
Never view'd shapes half fair enough to fill
The royal galleries of my boundless will.
Never wrote I one line that I could greet
A twelvemonth after with a brow of fire.
Thus, then, with aim unreach'd, thought unexpress'd,
Unsatiated throbbings of desire,

I walk my way of life, and find no rest.

Thus beauty does not soothe me, and a cry

Of some deep want ends all my poesy.

4.

Lord! all my sins and negligences past,

Whereby, though fain, I am powerless to proclaim Some great thing, worthy of Thy worthy Name, Pardon. And be Thy royal purple cast