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Coom oop, proputty, proputty-that's what I 'ears 'im saäy

Proputty, proputty, proputty — canter an' canter

awaay.

THE VICTIM.

I:

A PLAGUE upon the people fell,
A famine after laid them low,
Then thorpe and byre arose in fire,
For on them brake the sudden foe;
So thick they died the people cried
"The Gods are moved against the land."
The Priest in horror about his altar
To Thor and Odin lifted a hand:

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Help us from famine

And plague and strife!

What would you have of us ?
Human life?

Were it our nearest,

Were it our dearest,
(Answer, O answer)
We give you his life."

II.

But still the foeman spoil'd and burn'd,
And cattle died, and deer in wood,
And bird in air, and fi-hes turn'

And whiten'd all the rolling flood;
And dead men lay all over the way,

Or down in a furrow scathed with flame;
And ever and aye the Priesthood moan'd
Till at last it seem'd that an answer came:
"The King is happy

In child and wife;
Take you his dearest,
Give us a life."

III.

The Priest went out by heath and hill;
The King was hunting in the wild;
They found the mother sitting still;

She cast her arms about the child.
The child was only eight summers old,
His beauty still with his years increased,
His face was ruddy, his hair was gold,
He seem'd a victim due to the priest.
The Priest beheld him,

And cried with joy,

"The Gods have answer'd:
We give them the boy."

IV.

The King return'd from out the wild,
He bore but little game in hand;
The mother said, "They have taken the child
To spill his blood and heal the land:
The land is sick, the people diseased,
And blight and famine on all the lea:
The holy Gods, they must be appeased,
So I pray you tell the truth to me.
They have taken our son,
They will have his life.
Is he your dearest ?
Or I, the wife?"

V.

The King bent low, with hand on brow,
He stay'd his arms upon his knee:
"O wife, what use to answer now?

For now the Priest has judged for me."

The King was shaken with holy fear;

"The Gods," he said, "would have chosen well; Yet both are near, and both are dear,

And which the dearest I cannot tell!"

But the Priest was happy,
His victim won:

"We have his dearest,
His only son!"

VI.

The rites prepared, the victim bared,
The knife uprising toward the blow,
To the altar-stone she sprang alone,
Me, not my darling, no!"

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He caught her away with a sudden cry;
Suddenly from him brake his wife,
And shrieking “I am his dearest, 1

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I am his dearest!" rush'd on the knife.
And the Priest was happy,

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O, Father Odin,

We give you a life.

Which was his nearest?
Who was his dearest?
The Gods have answer'd;
We give them the wife !"

WAGES.

GLORY of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea

Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the

wrong

Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she:

Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue

be dust,

Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly?

She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of

the just,

To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky:

Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.

THE HIGHER PANTHEISM.

THE sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains

Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who

reigns?

Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems?

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,

Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?

Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason

why;

For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel "I am I"?

Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom,

Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor and gloom.

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice, For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice.

Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool; For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool;

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the

eye

of

man cannot see;

But if we could see and hear, this Vision not He?

were it

FLOWER in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies;
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower- but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

LUCRETIUS.

LUCILIA, wedded to Lucretius, found
Her master cold; for when the morning flush
Of passion and the first embrace had died
Between them, tho' he loved her none the less,
Yet often when the woman heard his foot
Return from pacings in the field, and ran
To greet him with a kiss, the master took
Small notice, or austerely, for his mind
Half buried in some weightier argument,
Or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise
And long roll of the Hexameter―he past
To turn and ponder those three hundred scrolls
Left by the Teacher whom he held divine.

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