And weeping of the sufferers; there where the Pleiads

float

Here, there, forever, pain most dread and dire

Doth bring the intensest bliss, the dearest and most sure. 'Tis not from Life aside, it doth endure

Deep in the secret heart of all existence.

It is the inward fire,

The heavenly urge, and the divine insistence.

Uplift thine eyes, O Questioner, from the sod!

It were no longer Life,

If ended were the strife;

Man were not man, God were not truly God.

PART VI

ODE

Read before the Alpha Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Harvard University, June 26, 1890.

I

In the white midday's full, imperious show
What glorious colors hide from human sight!
But in the breathing pause 'twixt day and night
Forth stream those prisoned splendors, glow on glow;
Like billows on they pour

And beat against the shore

Of cloud-wrought cliffs high as the utmost dome,
To die in purple waves that break on dawns to come.

II

Divine, divine! O, breathe no earthlier word!

Behold the western heavens how swift they flame
With hues that bring to mortal language shame;

Swelling and pulsing like deep music heard
On sacred summer eves

When the loud organ grieves

And thrills with lyric life the incensed air,
While 'mid the pillared gloom the people bow in prayer.

III

Now is it some huge bird with monstrous vans
That through the sunset plies its shadowy way,
Catching on outstretched pinions the last play
Of failing tint celestial! See! it spans

Darkly the fading west,

And now its beamy crest

Follows from sight the glittering, golden sun;
And now one mighty wing-beat more, and all is done.

IV

But in those skyey spaces what dread change!
Thus have we seen the mortal turn immortal;

So doth the day's soul die, as through death's portal The soul of man takes up its heavenward range.

Till, the long miracle of night withdrawn,

The world beholds once more the miracle of dawn.

V

Dawn, eve, and night, the iridescent seas,

Bright moon, enlightening sun, and quivering stars,
The midnight rose whose petals are the bars
Of Boreal lights, the pomp of autumn trees,
The pearl of curvèd shells,

The prismy bow that swells

'Gainst stormy skies- these witness, these are sign Of thee, O spirit of Beauty, eternal and divine!

The naked loveliness in Eden's bower,

Whose flesh blusht back the tint of fruit and flower; Whose eye reflamed the starlight; who could call Father and friend the God

That pluckt them from the sod;

The Almighty's image, and Creation's hight; Whose deep souls mirrored clear the circling day and night.

VII

Spirit of Beauty! 'neath thy joyful spell

Man hath been ever; therefore doth each breeze
Bring to his trancèd ears glad melodies,-
Voices of birds, the brook's low, silvery bell,-
Wild music manifold,

Which he hath power to hold

His own enchanted harmonies among,

That echo round the world the songs that nature sung.

VIII

And thus all Beautiful in Holiness

Doth Israel stand before the Eternal One;
Striking his harp with rapt, angelic tone,
Till tribes and nations the Unseen God confess;
Knowing that only where

His face makes white the air

Could such seraphic song have mortal birth,
One saving faith sublime to keep alive on earth.

IX

And therefore with most passionate desire

And longing, man yearned ever to express
Thy majesty, and light, and loveliness,

O Spirit of Beauty, unconsuming fire!

Therefore by ancient Nile

Rose the vast columned aisle,

And on the Athenian Hill the wonder white
Whose shattered glory is the world's supreme delight.

X

So is it that to thy imperial shore,
Bright Italy! the generations fly,

Even but once to breathe, or e'er they die,
Where did a godlike race its soul outpour;
Its birth divine revealing

On glorious wall and ceiling,

While dome and rhythmic statue, Beauty-wrought, Declare all human art is but what Heaven hath taught.

XI

Fair Italy! whose dread and peerless hight

The song is of the awful Ghibelline!

Poet! who 'mid the threefold dream divine

Didst follow Art and Love to the Central Light!
Tell us, O Dante! tell

What thou dost know so well,

That horror and death are but the shade and foil
Of Beauty, deathless, godlike, with never scathe or soil.

XII

Spirit divine! man falls upon the sod

In awe of thee, in worship and amaze:—
Thou older than the mountains, or the blaze
Of sunsets, or the sun; thou old as God;
As God who did create

Long ere man reached his state

All shapes of natural Beauty that men see,
And His wide universe did dedicate to thee.

TO ROSAMOND

XIII

Ye who bear on the torch of living art

189

In this new world, saved for some wondrous fate, Deem not that ye have come, alas, too late, But haste right forward with unfailing heart! Ye shall not rest forlorn;

Rises in splendor from the orient sea,

And the new world shall greet a new divinity.

XIV

Shall greet, ah, who can say! a nobler face
Than from the foam of Cytherean seas:
Loveliness lovelier; mightier harmonies
song and color; an intenser grace;

Of

Beauty that shall endure

Like Charis, heavenly-pure;

A Spirit solemn as the starry night,
And full as the triumphant dawn of golden light.

AFTER-SONG

TO ROSAMOND

ROSE of the world,

Bloom of the year,
Birth of the dawn!
By morn's one star
Lighted to life! —

Thou and my songs
Come to the day

Hand claspt in hand.