RENUNCIANTS.

Seems not our breathing light? Sound not our voices free?

Bid to Life's festal bright

No gladder guests there be.

Ah stranger, lay aside

Cold prudence! I divine

The secret you would hide,

And you conjecture mine.

You too have temperate eyes,

Have put your heart to school,

Are proved. I recognize

A brother of the rule.

I knew it by your lip,

A something when you smiled,

Which meant 'close scholarship,

A master of the guild.'

Well, and how good is life,

Good to be born, have breath, The calms good and the strife, Good life, and perfect death.

Come, for the dancers wheel,
Join we the pleasant din,
-Comrade, it serves to feel

The sackcloth next the skin.

M

SPEAKERS TO GOD.

First Speaker.

Eastward I went and Westward, North and South, And the wind blew me from deep zone to zone; Many strong women did I love; my mouth

I gave for kisses, rose, and straight was gone.

I fought with heroes; there was joyous play
Of swords; my cities rose in every land;
Then forth I fared. O God, thou knowest, I lay
Ever within the hollow of thy hand.

Second Speaker.

I am borne out to thee upon the wave,

And the land lessens; cry nor speech I hear, Nought but the leaping waters and the brave

Pure winds commingling. O the joy, the fear!

Alone with thee; sky's rim and ocean's rim

Touch, overhead the clear immensity

Is merely God; no eyes of seraphim

Thus it shall be a lifetime,-ne'er to meet;

A trackless land divides us lone and long; Others who seek Him, find, run swift to greet Their Friend, approach the bridegroom's door

with song.

I stand, nor dare affirm I see or hear;

How should I dream, when strict is my employ? Yet if some time, far hence, thou drawest near

Shall there be any joy like to our joy?

POESIA.

(To a Painter.)

Paint her with robe and girdle laid aside,
Without a jewel upon her; you must hide
By sleight of artist from the gazer's view
No whit of her fair body; calm and true
Her eyes must meet our passion, as aware
The world is beautiful, and she being fair
A part of it. She needs be no more pure
Than a dove is, nor could one well endure
More faultlessness than of a sovran rose,
Reserved, yet liberal to each breeze that blows.
Let her be all revealed, nor therefore less
A mystery of unsearchable loveliness;
There must be no discoveries to be made,
Save as a noonday sky with not a shade