PHILOSOPHY.

NAKED and poor thou goest, Philosophy!

Thy robe of serge hath lain beneath the stars;

Thy weight of tresses, ponderously free,

Of iron hue, no golden circlet bars.

Thy pale page, Study, by thy side doth hold,
As by Cyprigna's her persuasive boy :

Twin sacks thou bear'st; one doth thy gifts infold,
Whose modest tendering proves immortal joy.

The other at thy patient back doth hang
To keep the boons thou'rt wonted to receive:
Reproof therein doth hide her venomed fang,
And hard barbaric arts, that mock and grieve.

Here is a stab, and here a mortal thrust;

Here galley service brought the age to loss;

Here lies thy virgin forehead rolled in dust

Beside the martyr stake or hero cross.

They who besmirched thy whiteness with their pitch,

Thy gallery of glories did complete ;

They who accepted of thee so grew rich,

Men could not count their treasures in the street.

Thy hollow cheek, and eye of distant light,
Won from the chief of men their noblest love;
Olympian feasts thy temperance requite,

And thy worn weeds a priceless dowry prove.

I know not if I've caught the matchless mood
In which impassioned Petrarch sang of thee;
But this I know, the world its plenitude

May keep, so I may share thy beggary.

KOSMOS.

Or dust the primal Adam came

In wondrous sequency evolved,

With speech that gave creation name,
Of art and artist never solved.

With something of a mother-pang
The Sun conceived the starry spheres
That from her burning bosom sprang,
Immortal children of her tears.

-

From height of heat, and stress of span, The measured Earth took poise and hold; And beasts, the prophecy of man,

And man, were latent in her mould.

And hid in man a world intense,
The centre point of things that be,
With soul that conquers out of sense

Its incomplete divinity.

Around one infinite intent

All power and inspiration move, Thrilling with light the firmament, Lifting the heart of man with love.

FIRST CAUSES.

"WE need no God," the Atheist said;

"The World is wound, and set to go:

How it was wound we do now know; it will when we are dead.

But

go

You question me as one who pleads To keep his ancient faith with tears:

In this our harmlessness appears,

We rob no nature of its needs.

The weak, for whom a God must be, Will hold the apt invention still,

While from the arbitrary will

We and the hardier souls are free."