TIME.

I SAW Time in his workshop carving faces;
Scattered around his tools lay, blunting griefs,
Sharp cares that cut out deeply in reliefs

Of light and shade; sorrows that smooth the traces
Of what were smiles. Nor yet without fresh graces
His handiwork, for ofttimes rough were ground
And polished, oft the pinched made smooth and
round;

The calm look, too, the impetuous fire replaces.

Long time I stood and watched; with hideous grin
He took each heedless face between his knees,
And graved and scarred and bleached with boil-
ing tears.

I wondering turned to go, when, lo! my skin
Feels crumpled, and in glass my own face sees

Itself all changed, scarred, careworn, white with
years.

WORDS.

WORDS are but passing symbols of the deep
Crying unto deep in individual souls.

And men are words on the great voice that rolls Through Nature, since that morn when from their

sleep

The elements heard, and they who vigil keep

On Heaven's battlements, to distant poles
Re-echoed, “Let light be !"—such voice as tolls
The birth and death of all who laugh or weep.

Not uniform, but in a wondrous plan,

Each diverse from his fellows, symbol each Of varying thought in the eternal mind. Now at the feet of every age of man

We sit and learn. Haply, in perfect speech

Its voice will be God's message to our kind.

THE POET'S EMPIRE.

WHAT power can break the inner harmonies,
The rich imaginings, heard like distant sea

O'er purple meadow-lands at eve, while we

Look starwards mute? Hopes that like mountains rise Into mid-heaven, and to entranced eyes

Horizon-glories of what is to be,—

All these and more lie round us infinitely, Beyond all language fair in cloudless skies.

This is the poet's empire. Here may he

Reign king-like, throned in splendour and in power No power can shake, so he indeed be king. Free as the wind, untamèd as the sea,

When earth weighs heavily, most in that hour

He cleaves the heavens in scorn on eagle-wing.

IN MEMORIAM. E. S.

HER love was that full love which, like a tide,
Flows in and out life's smallest gulfs and bays,
And fills with music through long summer days
Cold hearts that else would stern and dark abide.
Her smile would cheer, her faintest look could chide;
No soul too outcast, none too lowly born,

For her kind ear; and none too high for scorn
Of mean pretence, or wrong, or foolish pride.

She loved all Nature; mountain, stream, and tree To her were thoughts or language for the thought She could not utter, signs of truths too high

To set to words. Her love, too, like a tide,

Flowed daily back with cares its surface brought To the still vast beneath eternal sky.

November 21, 1886.

TRUTH.

I SAW Truth on the mountains, golden-shod
With day-dawn, girt about with skies

Of azure mist, half veiling from man's eyes
Her silent face and gaze upturned to God.
Beneath were clouded steeps of shale and sod,
Tracked deviously by feet that human-wise
Toiled upward, but toiled vainly towards the prize;
Some following, shunning some where others trod.

Yet in the darkness oft there came, "I see,"
From eager hearts I met. "Behold!" men cried,
Yet variously; "such are Truth's features high."

Self's shadow, from the soul's intensity

Cast on the mist, not such the face I spied,
Calm, sovereign, silent, upturned 'midst the sky.