On solitary souls, the universe

Looks down inhospitable; the human heart
Finds nowhere shelter but in human kind.

In the screening time

Of purple blossoms, when the petals crowd
And softly crush like cherub cheeks in heaven,
Who thinks of greenly withered fruit and worms?
O the warm southern spring is beauteous!
And in love's spring all good seems possible :
No threats, all promise, brooklets ripple full
And bathe the rushes, vicious crawling things
Are pretty eggs, the sun shines graciously
And parches not, the silent rain beats warm
As childhood's kisses, days are young and grow,
And earth seems in its sweet beginning time
Fresh made for two who live in Paradise.

-0

PABLO'S SONG.

WARM whispering through the slender olive leaves Came to me a gentle sound,

Whispering of a secret found

In the clear sunshine 'mid the golden sheaves :
Said it was sleeping for me in the morn,

Called it gladness, called it joy,

Drew me on-'come hither, boy'-—

To where the blue wings rested on the corn.

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.)

Castilian gentlemen

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

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.

-0

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.

—0—

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!

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