INDIRECTION

FAIR are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer; Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer;

Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter; And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the metre.

Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the growing;

Never a river that flows, but a majesty sceptres the flowing;

Never a Shakespeare that soared, but a stronger than he did enfold him,

Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer hath foretold him.

Pressed rightly flows in aromatic wine; And every humble hedgerow flower that grows,

And every little brown bird that doth sing, Hath something greater than itself, and bears

A living Word to every living thing,
Albeit it hold the Message unawares.
All shapes and sounds have something
which is not

Of them: a Spirit broods amid the grass;
Vague outlines of the Everlasting Thought
Lie in the melting shadows as they pass;
The touch of an Eternal Presence thrills
The fringes of the sunsets and the hills.

AN OLD MAN'S IDYL

is hinted and hidden;

Into the statue that breathes the soul of the sculptor is bidden;.

Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issues of feeling;

Crowning the glory revealed is the glory.

that crowns the revealing.

Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboled is greater; Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward creator;

Back of the sound broods the silence, back

of the gift stands the giving; Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of receiving.

Space is as nothing to spirit, the deed is outdone by the doing;

The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the wooing;

And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the heights where those shine,

Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of life is divine.

THE WORD

O EARTH! thou hast not any wind that blows Which is not music; every weed of thine

Hand in hand in the golden days Of the beautiful early summer weather, When skies were purple and breath was

praise,

In the meadows of Life we strayed together,
Watching the waving harvests grow;
And under the benison of the Father
Our hearts, like the lambs, skipped to
and fro.

And the cowslip, hearing our low replies,
Broidered fairer the emerald banks,
And glad tears shone in the daisy's eyes,
And the timid violet glistened thanks.

Who was with us, and what was round us,
Neither myself nor my darling guessed;
Only we knew that something crowned us
Out from the heavens with crowns of
rest;

Only we knew that something bright
Lingered lovingly where we stood,
Clothed with the incandescent light
Of something higher than humanhood.

O the riches Love doth inherit !
Ah, the alchemy which doth change
Dross of body and dregs of spirit
Into sanctities rare and strange !

My flesh is feeble and dry and old,

My darling's beautiful hair is gray; But our elixir and precious gold

Laugh at the footsteps of decay.

Harms of the world have come unto us,
Cups of sorrow we yet shall drain;
But we have a secret which doth show us
Wonderful rainbows in the rain.
And we hear the tread of the years move
by,

And the sun is setting behind the hills;
But my darling does not fear to die,
And I am happy in what God wills.

So we sit by our household fires together, Dreaming the dreams of long ago: Then it was balmy summer weather,

And now the valleys are laid in snow. Icicles hang from the slippery eaves;

The wind blows cold, 't is growing late; Well, well! we have garnered all our sheaves,

I and my darling, and we wait.

Loved by the satyr and the faun!
To thee the olive and the vine,
To thee the Mediterranean pine,
And the soft lapping sea!
Thine, Bacchus,

Thine, the blood-red revels,
Thine, the bearded goat!
Soft valleys unto thee,
And Aphrodite's shrine,

And maidens veiled in falling robes of lawn!
But unto us, to us,

The stalwart glories of the North;
Ours is the sounding main,

And ours the voices uttering forth

By midnight round these cliffs a mighty strain;

A tale of viewless islands in the deep
Washed by the waves' white fire;

Of mariners rocked asleep,

In the great cradle, far from Grecian ire Of Neptune and his train;

The flight of gold through hollow woodlands driven,

Soft dying of the year with many a sigh, These, all, to us are given !

And eyes that eager evermore shall search The hidden seed, and searching find again Unfading blossoms of a fadeless spring; These, these, to us!

The sacred youth and maid,

Coy and half afraid;

The sorrowful earthly pall,
Winter and wintry rain,
And autumn's gathered grain,

With whispering music in their fall;
These unto us!

And unto thee, Theocritus,
To thee,

THE RETURN

THE bright sea washed beneath her feet, As it had done of yore,

The well-remembered odor sweet

Came through her opening door.

Again the grass his ripened head

Bowed where her raiment swept; Again the fog-bell told of dread,

And all the landscape wept.

Again beside the woodland bars

She found the wilding rose, With petals fine and heart of stars, The flower our childhood knows.

And there, before that blossom small, By its young face beguiled,