I thought the gentle sound had whispered true— Thought the little heaven mine,

Leaned to clutch the thing divine,

And saw the blue wings melt within the blue.

-0

The time is great.

(What times are little?

To the sentinel

That hour is regal when he mounts on guard.)

-0

Castilian gentlemen

Choose not their task-they choose to do it well.

—0—

Life itself

May not express us all, may leave the worst
And the best too, like tunes in mechanism
Never awaked.

Great Love has many attributes, and shrines
For varied worshippers, but his force divine
Shows most its many-named fulness in the man
Whose nature multitudinously mixed—
Each ardent impulse grappling with a thought—
Resists all easy gladness, all content

Save mystic rapture, where the questioning soul
Flooded with consciousness of good that is
Finds life one bounteous answer.

PABLO'S SONG.

IT was in the prime
Of the sweet Spring-time.
In the linnet's throat

Trembled the love-note,
And the love-stirred air

Thrilled the blossoms there.

Little shadows danced

Each a tiny elf,
Happy in large light

And the thinnest self.

It was but a minute

In a far-off Spring,

But each gentle thing,

Sweetly-wooing linnet,
Soft-thrilled hawthorn tree,

Happy shadowy elf

With the thinnest self,

Live still on in me;

O the sweet, sweet prime

Of the past Spring-time.

So the dire hours

Burthened with destiny—the death of hopes
Darkening long generations, or the birth

Of thoughts undying-such hours sweep along

In their aërial ocean measureless

Myriads of little joys, that ripen sweet

And soothe the sorrowful spirit of the world, Groaning and travailing with the painful birth Of slow redemption.

The soul of man is widening towards the past:
No longer hanging at the breast of life
Feeding in blindness to his parentage-
Quenching all wonder with Omnipotence,
Praising a name with indolent piety-
He spells the record of his long descent,
More largely conscious of the life that was.

In moments high

Space widens in the soul.

Faith, the stronger for extremity,
Becomes prophetic.

Can we believe that the dear dead are gone? Love in sad weeds forgets the funeral-day, Opens the chamber door and almost smiles— Then sees the sunbeams pierce athwart the bed Where the pale face is not.

Spirits seem buried and their epitaph
Is writ in Latin by severest pens,

Yet still they flit above the trodden grave
And find new bodies, animating them

In quaint and ghostly way with antique souls.

So Juan was a troubadour revived,
Freshening life's dusty road with babbling rills
Of wit and song, living 'mid harnessed men
With limbs ungalled by armour, ready so
To soothe them weary, and to cheer them sad.
Guest at the board, companion in the camp,
A crystal mirror to the life around,

Flashing the comment keen of simple fact
Defined in words; lending brief lyric voice
To grief and sadness; hardly taking note
Of difference betwixt his own and others';
But rather singing as a listener

To the deep moans, the cries, the wild strong joys
Of universal nature, old yet young.

-0

JUAN'S SONG.

PUSH off the boat,

Quit, quit the shore,

The stars will guide us back :

O gathering cloud,

O wide, wide sea,

O waves that keep no track!

On through the pines !

The pillared woods,

Where silence breathes sweet breath:

O labyrinth,

O sunless gloom,

The other side of death!

So soft a night was never made for sleep,
But for the waking of the finer sense
To every murmuring and gentle sound,
To subtlest odours, pulses, visitings

That touch our frames with wings too delicate

To be discerned amid the blare of day.

(She pauses near the window to gather some jasmine: then walks again.)

Surely these flowers keep happy watch-their breath Is their fond memory of the loving light.

I often rue the hours I lose in sleep :

It is a bliss too brief, only to see

This glorious world, to hear the voice of love,
To feel the touch, the breath of tenderness,
And then to rest as from a spectacle.

I need the curtained stillness of the night
To live through all my happy hours again
With more selection-cull them quite away
From blemished moments. Then in loneliness
The face that bent before me in the day
Rises in its own light, more vivid seems