One Life, One Law

What do we know-what need we know

Of the great world to which we go?
We peer into the tomb, and hark :
Its walls are dim, its doors are dark.

Be still, O mourning heart, nor seek
To make the tongueless silence speak:
Be still, be strong, nor wish to find
Their way who leave the world behind-
Voices and forms forever gone

Into the darkness of the dawn.

What is their wisdom, clear and deep ?—
That as men sow they surely reap,-
That every thought, that every deed,
Is sown into the soul for seed.

They have no word we do not know,-
Nor yet the cherubim aglow

With God: we know that virtue saves,—
They know no more beyond the graves.

ΙΟΟ

Griefs

The rains of winter scourged the weald, For days they darkened on the field: Now, where the wings of winter beat, The poppies ripple in the wheat.

And pitiless griefs came thick and fastLife's bough was naked in the blastTill silently amid the gloom

They blew the wintry heart to bloom.

An Old Road

A host of poppies, a flight of swallows;
A flurry of rain, and a wind that follows

Shepherds the leaves in the sheltered hollows,

For the forest is shaken and thinned.

Over my head are the firs for rafter;
The crows blow south, and my heart goes

after;

I kiss my hands to the world with laughterIs it Aidenn or mystical Ind?

Oh, the whirl of the fields in the windy weather!

How the barley breaks and blows together! Oh, glad is the free bird afloat on the heather

Oh, the whole world is glad of the wind!

The New-Comers

Two swallows-each preening a long glossy feather;

Now they gossip and dart through the silvery weather;

Oh, praise to the Highest-two lovers together

Free, free in the fathomless world of air.

No fate to oppose and no fortune to sunder; Blue sky overhead-green sky breaking un

der;

And their home on the cliff in the midst of the wonder,

Hung high beyond fear on the gray granite stair.

Music

It is the last appeal to man-
Voice crying since the world began ;
The cry of the Ideal-cry

To aspirations that would die.
The last appeal! in it is heard
The pathos of the final word.

Voice tender and heroical-
Imperious voice that knoweth well
To wreck the reasonings of years,
To strengthen rebel hearts with tears.