Deepened, and on his forehead. smote the breeze : Beauty was all around him and delight, But from that eve he was alone on earth. THE FALCON. I KNOW a falcon swift and peerless The winds not better love to pilot A cloud with molten gold o'errun, Than him, a little burning islet, A star above the coming sun. For with a lark's heart he doth. tower, By a glorious upward instinct drawn; No bee nestles deeper in the flower Than he in the bursting rose of dawn. No harmless dove, no bird that singeth, Shudders to see him overhead; The rush of his fierce swooping bringeth To innocent hearts no thrill of dread. Let fraud and wrong and baseness shiver, For still between them and the sky The falcon Truth hangs poised for ever And marks them with his vengeful eye. TRIAL. I. WHETHER the idle prisoner through his grate Watches the waving of the grasstuft small, Which, having colonized its rift i' the wall, Takes its free risk of good or evil fate, And heedless of the encircling spirit-world, Which, though unseen, is felt, and sows in us All germs of pure and world-wide purposes. From one stage of our being to the next We pass unconscious o'er a slender bridge, The momentary work of unseen hands, Which crumbles down behind us; looking back, We see the other shore, the gulf between, And, marvelling how we won to where we stand, Content ourselves to call the builder Chance. We trace the wisdom to the apple's fall, Not to the birth-throes of a mighty Truth Which, for long ages in blank Chaos dumb, Yet yearned to be incarnate, and had found At last a spirit meet to be the womb From which it might be born to bless mankind, Not to the soul of Newton, ripe with all The hoarded thoughtfulness of earnest years, And waiting but one ray of sunlight more To blossom fully. But whence came that ray? We call our sorrows Destiny, but ought Rather to name our high successes So. Only the instincts of great souls are Fate, And have predestined sway: all other things, Except by leave of us, could never be. For destiny is but the breath of God Still moving in us, the last frag ment left A look of patient power and iron will, And something fiercer, too, that gave broad hint Of the plain weapons girded at their sides. The younger had an aspect of command, Not such as trickles down, a slender stream, In the shrunk channel of a great descent, But such as lies entowered in heart and head, And an arm prompt to do the 'hests of both. His was a brow where gold were out of place, And yet it seemed right worthy of a crown (Though he despised such), were it only made Of iron, or some serviceable stuff That would have matched his sinewy brown face. The elder, although such he hardly seemed (Care makes so little of some five short years), Had a clear, honest face, whose rough-hewn strength Was mildened by the scholar's wiser heart To sober courage, such as best befits The unsullied temper of a welltaught mind, Yet so remained that one could plainly guess The hushed volcano smouldering underneath. He spoke the other, hearing, kept his gaze Still fixed, as on some problem in the sky. "O CROMWELL, we are fallen on evil times! There was a day when England had wide room For honest men as well as foolish kings: But now the uneasy stomach of the time Turns squeamish at them both. Therefore let us Seek out that savage clime, where | Moreover, as I know that God men as yet Are free: there sleeps the vessel on the tide, Her languid canvas drooping for the wind; Give us but that and what need we to fear This Order of the Council? The free waves Will not say, No, to please a wayward king, Nor will the winds turn traitors at his beck: All things are fitly cared for, and the Lord Will watch as kindly o'er the exodus Of us His servants now, as in old time. We have no cloud or fire, and haply we May not pass dry-shod through the ocean-stream; But, saved or lost, all things are in His hand." So spake he, and meantime the other stood With wide gray eyes still reading the blank air, As if upon the sky's blue wall he my soul brings round His purposes in ways undreamed by us, And makes the wicked but His instruments To hasten their own swift and sudden fall, I see the beauty of His providence In the King's order: blind he will not let His doom part from him, but must bid it stay As 'twere a cricket, whose enlivening chirp He loved to hear beneath his very hearth. Why should we fly? Nay, why not rather stay And rear again our Zion's crumbled walls, Not, as of old the walls of Thebes were built, By minstrel twanging, but, if need should be, With the more potent music of our swords? Think'st thou that score of men be The most, 'tis not because He hides His face From them in wrath, as purblind teachers prate: Not so there most is He, for there is He Most needed. Men who seek for Fate abroad Are not so near His heart as they who dare Whispers of warning to the inner Frankly to face her where she faces ear. them, |