Make heirship do the work of muscle, sail
Towards great discoveries with a pedigree?
Sick men ask cures, and Nature serves not hers
Daintily as a feast. A blacksmith once
Founded a dynasty, and raised on high

The leathern apron over armies spread
Between the mountains like a lake of steel.

He who rules

Must humour full as much as he commands;

Must let men vow impossibilities;

Grant folly's prayers that hinder folly's wish
And serve the ends of wisdom.

High device is still the highest force, And he who holds the secret of the wheel May make the rivers do what work he would. With thoughts impalpable we clutch men's souls, Weaken the joints of armies, make them fly Like dust and leaves before the viewless wind. Tell me what's mirrored in the tiger's heart, I'll rule that too.

0

What man is he who brandishes a sword
In darkness, kills his friends, and rages then
Against the night that kept him ignorant ?

A woman's dream-who thinks by smiling well

To ripen figs in frost.

-0

Vengeance is just :

Justly we rid the earth of human fiends
Who carry hell for pattern in their souls.
But in high vengeance there is noble scorn:
It tortures not the torturer, nor gives
Iniquitous payment for iniquity.

The great avenging angel does not crawl
To kill the serpent with a mimic fang;

He stands erect, with sword of keenest edge
That slays like lightning.

Men might well seek

For purifying rites; even pious deeds

Need washing.

(To Fedalma.)

Ah, yes! all preciousness

To mortal hearts is guarded by a fear.

All love fears loss, and most that loss supreme,

Its own perfection-seeing, feeling change

From high to lower, dearer to less dear.

Can love be careless? If we lost our love

What should we find ?—with this sweet Past torn off,

Our lives deep scarred just where their beauty lay? The best we found thenceforth were still a worse: The only better is a Past that lives

On through an added Present, stretching still

In hope unchecked by shaming memories

There's no blameless life

Save for the passionless, no sanctities

But have the selfsame roof and props with crime, Or have their roots close interlaced with vileness.

I am no friend of fines and banishment,

Or flames that, fed on heretics, still gape,

And must have heretics made to feed them still.

Prudence is but conceit

Hoodwinked by ignorance. There's nought exists
That is not dangerous and holds not death
For souls or bodies. Prudence turns its helm
To flee the storm and lands 'mid pestilence.
Wisdom would end by throwing dice with folly
But for dire passion which alone makes choice.

Thoughts

That nourish us to magnanimity

Grow perfect with more perfect utterance,
Gathering full-shapen strength.

—0—

Conscience is harder than our enemies,
Knows more, accuses with more nicety,
Nor needs to question Rumour if we fall
Below the perfect model of our thought.

Love supreme

Defies all sophistry-risks avenging fires.

For me

'Tis what I love determines how I love.

The goddess with pure rites reveals herself
And makes pure worship.

0

Rivers blent take in a broader heaven,

And we shall blend our souls.

What is our certainty? Why, knowing all

That is not secret. Mighty confidence!

One pulse of Time makes the base hollow-sends

The towering certainty we built so high

Toppling in fragments meaningless. What is—
What will be-must be-pooh! they wait the key
Of that which is not yet; all other keys

Are made of our conjectures, take their sense
From humours fooled by hope, or by despair.
Know what is good? O God, we know not yet
If bliss itself is not young misery

With fangs swift growing.

Life's a vast sea

That does its mighty errand without fail,

Panting in unchanged strength though waves are changing.

Truth, to us, is like a living child Born of two parents: if the parents part And will divide the child, how shall it live? Or, I will rather say: Two angels guide The path of man, both aged and yet young, As angels are, ripening through endless years. On one he leans: some call her Memory, And some, Tradition; and her voice is sweet, With deep mysterious accords: the other, Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams A light divine and searching on the earth, Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew