LIFE

A TRAIN of gay and clouded days
Dappled with joy and grief and praise,
Beauty to fire us, saints to save,
Escort us to a little grave.

No fate, save by the victim's fault, is low, For God hath writ all dooms magnificent, So guilt not traverses his tender will.

THIS shining moment is an edifice Which the Omnipotent cannot rebuild.

ROOMY Eternity

Casts her schemes rarely,
And an æon allows
For each quality and part
Of the multitudinous

And many-chambered heart.

BE of good cheer, brave spirit; steadfastly Serve that low whisper thou hast served; for know,

God hath a select family of sons

Now scattered wide thro' earth, and each alone,

Who are thy spiritual kindred, and each one
By constant service to that inward law,
Is weaving the sublime proportions
Of a true monarch's soul. Beauty and
strength,

The riches of a spotless memory,
The eloquence of truth, the wisdom got
By searching of a clear and loving eye
That seeth as God seeth, - these are their
gifts;

And Time, who keeps God's word, brings on the day

To seal the marriage of these minds with thine,

Thine everlasting lovers. Ye shall be The salt of all the elements, world of the world.

LOVE

Asks nought his brother cannot give; Asks nothing, but does all receive. Love calls not to his aid events;

He to his wants can well suffice:
Asks not of others soft consents,
Nor kind occasion without eyes;
Nor plots to ope or bolt a gate,
Nor heeds Condition's iron walls,
Where he goes, goes before him Fate;
Whom he uniteth, God installs;
Instant and perfect his access

To the dear object of his thought,
Though foes and land and seas between
Himself and his love intervene.

TELL men what they knew before; Paint the prospect from their door.

HIM strong Genius urged to roam, Stronger Custom brought him home.

THAT each should in his house abide, Therefore was the world so wide.1

YES, sometimes to the sorrow-stricken
Shall his own sorrow seem impertinent,
A thing that takes no more root in the world
Than doth the traveller's shadow on the
rock.

REX

THE bard and mystic held me for their own,
I filled the dream of sad, poetic maids,
I took the friendly noble by the hand,
I was the trustee of the hand-cart man,
The brother of the fisher, porter, swain,
And these from the crowd's edge well
pleased beheld

The service done to me as done to them.

SHUN passion, fold the hands of thrift, Sit still, and Truth is near : Suddenly it will uplift

Your eyelids to the sphere:

1 A common thought with Emerson (see 'Written in Naples,' Written at Rome,' The Day's Ration,' and the essaySelf-Reliance'), but, as here expressed, evidently meant for a direct answer to the last words of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, so often quoted by Carlyle:

To give space for wandering is it
That the world was made so wide.