We saw the elder Corsican,
And Clotho muttered as she span,
While crowned lackeys bore the train,
Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne :
"Sister, stint not length of thread!
Sister, stay the scissors dread!
On Saint Helen's granite bleak,
Hark, the vulture whets his beak!"
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!

Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits for ever.

The Bonapartes, we know their bees
That wade in honey red to the knees;
Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound
In dreamless garners underground:
We know false glory's spendthrift race
Pawning nations for feathers and lace;
It may be short, it may

be long,

"Tis reckoning-day! sneers unpaid Wrong.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!

Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits for ever.

The Cock that wears the Eagle's skin
Can promise what he ne'er could win ;
Slavery reaped for fine words sown,
System for all, and rights for none,
Despots atop, a wild clan below,
Such is the Gaul from long ago;
Wash the black from the Ethiop's face,
Wash the past out of man or race!
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!

Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits for ever.

'Neath Gregory's throne a spider swings,
And snares the people for the kings;
"Luther is dead; old quarrels pass;

The stake's black scars are healed with grass;
So dreamers prate; did man e'er live
Saw priest or woman yet forgive?
But Luther's broom is left, and eyes
Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies.

Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!

Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits for ever.

Smooth sails the ship of either realm,
Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm ;
We look down the depths, and mark
Silent workers in the dark

Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs,
Old instincts hardening to new beliefs;
Patience a little; learn to wait;
Hours are long on the clock of Fate.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!

Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
Darkness is strong, and so is Sin,
But only God endures for ever.

THE MINER.

Down 'mid the tangled roots of things
That coil about the central fire,
I seek for that which giveth wings
To stoop, not soar, to my desire.
Sometimes I hear, as 'twere a sigh,

The sea's deep yearning far above,
"Thou hast the secret not," I cry,
"In deeper deeps is hid my Love."
They think I burrow from the sun,

In darkness, all alone, and weak; Such loss were gain if He were won, For 'tis the sun's own Sun I seek. "The earth," they murmur, "is the tomb That vainly sought his life to prison;

Why grovel longer in the gloom?

He is not here; he hath arisen."

More life for me where he hath lain
Hidden while ye believed him dead,

Than in cathedrals cold and vain,
Built on loose sands of It is said.

My search is for the living gold;
Him I desire who dwells recluse,
And not his image worn and old,
Day-servant of our sordid use.

If bin. 1 fmd not yet I fe

The ancient joy of cel aut corci.
The glimpse, the surety uuetmed
The unquenched ardour of in starİ..

Happier to chase a frig

Than to sit counting murelet

To guess the Soul with

the sou

Than to be lord of what remains

Hide still, best Good, in suntle VISE.
Beyond my nature's utmost scope :
Be ever absent from mine eyes

To be twice present in my hope!

GOLD EGG: A DREAM-FANTASY."

HOW A STUDENT IN SEARCH OF THE BEAUTIFUL FELL
ASTEEP IN DRESDEN OVER HERR PROFESSOR 100 A
VISCHER'S WISSENSCHAFT DES SCHÖNEN, AND WEAT
CAME THEREOF,

I SWAM with undulation soft,
Adrift on Vischer's ocean,
And, from my cockboat up aloft,
Sent down my mental plummet oft
In hope to reach a notion.

But from the metaphysic sea
No bottom was forthcoming,

And all the while (how drearily !)
In one eternal note of B

My German stove kept humming.

"What's Beauty?" mused I; "is it told
By synthesis? analysis?

Have you not made us lead of gold?
To feed your crucible, not sold

Our temple's sacred chalices ?"

Then o'er my senses came a change;
My book seemed all traditions,
Old legends of profoundest range,
Diablery, and stories strange

Of goblins, elves, magicians.

Old gods in modern saints I found,
Old creeds in strange disguises;

4

GOLD EGG.

I thought them safely underground,
And here they were all safe and sound,
Without a sign of phthisis.

Truth was, my outward eyes were closed,
Although I did not know it;
Deep into dream-land I had dozed,
And so was happily transposed
From proser into poet.

So what I read took flesh and blood,
And turned to living creatures;
The words were but the dingy bud
That bloomed, like Adam, from the mud,
To human forms and features.

I saw how Zeus was lodged once more
By Baucis and Philemon ;

The text said, "Not alone of yore,
But every day, at every door,

Knocks still the masking Demon."

DAIMON 'twas printed in the book,
And, as I read it slowly,

The letters stirred and changed, and took
Jove's stature, the Clympian look

Of painless melancholy.

He paused upon the threshold worn:
"With coin I cannot pay you;
Yet would I fain make some return;
The gift for cheapness do not spurn,
Accept this hen, I pray you.
"Plain feathers wears my Hemera,
And has from ages olden;
She makes her nest in common hay,
And yet, of all the birds that lay,
Her eggs alone are golden.”

He turned, and could no more be seen;
Old Baucis stared a moment,

Then tossed poor Partlet on the green,
And with a tone, half jest, half spleen,
Thus made her housewife's comment :
"The stranger had a queerish face,
His smile was hardly pleasant,
And, though he meant it lor a grace,
Yet this old hen of barnyard race
Was but a stingy present.

269

1

"She's quite too old for laying eggs,
Nay, even to make a soup of;
One only needs to see her legs,-
You might as well boil down the pegs
I made the brood-hen's coop of!
"Some eighteen score of such do I
Raise every year, her sisters;
Go, in the woods your fortunes try,
All day for one poor earthworm pry.
And scratch your toes to blisters!'
Philemon found the rede was good,

And, turning on the poor hen,

He clapt his hands, and stamped, and shooed,
Hunting the exile tow'rd the wood,

To house with snipe and moor-hen.

A poet saw and cried: "Hold! hold!
What are you doing, madman ?
Spurn you more wealth than can be told,
The fowl that lays the eggs of gold,
Because she's plainly clad, man?"

To him Philemon: "I'll not balk
Thy will with any shackle;
Wilt add a burden to thy walk?
There! take her without further talk;
You're both but fit to cackle!"

But scarce the poet touched the bird,
It swelled to stature regal;

And when her cloud-wide wings she stirred,
A whisper as of doom was heard,

'Twas Jove's bolt-bearing eagle.

As when from far-off cloud-bergs springs,
A crag, and, hurtling under,
From cliff to cliff the rumour flings,
So she from flight-foreboding wings
Shook out a murmurous thunder.

She gripped the poet to her breast,
And, ever upward soaring,

Earth seemed a new moon in the west,
And then one light among the rest
Where squadrons lie at mooring.

How tell to what heaven-hallowed seat
The eagle bent his courses?
The waves that on its basis beat,