Away, ye critics, city-bred, Like those who toil through drifted snow! Away, my poets, whose sweet spell Yet who convictest all our ill, Plucks part of childhood back again, Long there imprisoned, as the breeze Doth every hidden odour seize Will make one long sweet verse of Of wood and water, hill and plain; play. Once more am I admitted peer Snap, chord of manhood's tenser And feel through all my pulses run strain ! The royal blood of breeze and sun. Upon these elm-arched solitudes The only hammer that I hear No hum of neighbour toil intrudes; Is wielded by the woodpecker, The single noisy calling his The good old time, close-hidden In all our leaf-hid Sybaris; here, Persists, a loyal cavalier, While Roundheads prim, with point of fox, Probe wainscot-chink and empty box; Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast Insults thy statues, royal Past; Myself too prone the axe to wield, I touch the silver side of the shield With lance reversed, and challenge peace, A willing convert of the trees. How chanced it that so long I tost A cable'slength from this rich coast, With foolish anchors hugging close Nor had the wit to wreck before The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze, On this enchanted island's shore, Whither the current of the sea, With wiser drift, persuaded me? Oh, might we but of such rare days Alas! though such felicity 1 GODMINSTER CHIMES. GODMINSTER? Is it Fancy's play? This vision in my brain. Through aisles of long-drawn centuries My spirit walks in thought, And to that symbol lifts its eyes Which God's own pity wrought: From Calvary shines the altar's gleam, The Church's East is there, And all the way from Calvary down crown And safe in God repose; The saints of many a warring creed, And, as the mystic aisles I pace, By aureoled workmen built, Lives ending at the Cross I trace Alike through grace and guilt; One Mary bathes the blessed feet With ointment from her eyes, With spikenard one, and both are sweet, For both are sacrifice. Moravian hymn and Roman chant One choked with sinner's tears, Whilst thus I dream, the bells clash Upon the Sabbath air, But in that heaven so near In God's atoning ear? Oh chime of sweet Saint Charity, clear To all men shall be given, THE PARTING OF THE WHO hath not been a poet? Who years, Shot at a venture, and then, follow- | Not only that, but, so it seemed, ing on, Stood doubtful at the Parting of the Ways? shook out All memory too, and all the moonlit past, Old loves, old aspirations, and old dreams, More beautiful for being old and gone. So we two went together; downward sloped The path through yellow meads, or so I dreamed, Yellow with sunshine and young green, but I Saw naught nor heard, shut up in one close joy; I only felt the hand within my own, Transmuting all my blood to golden fire, Dissolving all my brain in throbbing mist. Suddenly shrank the hand; suddenly burst A cry that split the torpor of my brain, And as the first sharp thrust of lightning loosens From the heaped cloud its rain, loosened my sense: "Save me!" it thrilled; "Oh, hide me there is Death! Death the divider, the unmerciful, That digs his pitfalls under Love and Youth And covers Beauty up in the cold ground; Horrible Death! bringer of endless dark; Let him not see me! hide me in thy breast!" Thereat I strove to clasp her, but my arms Met only what slipped crumbling down, and fell, A handful of gray ashes, at my feet. I would have fled, I would have followed back That pleasant path we came, but all was changed; Rocky the way, abrupt, and hard to find; Yet I toiled on, and, toiling on, I thought, |