Through lonely lands, through cloudy seas and vext, At last the Holy Grail met Launfal's sight.

So when my friend lost him who was her next Of soul, life of her life, all day the fight Raged with a dumb and pitiless God. Perplext She slept. Heaven sent its comfort in the night.

LIFE

I

GREAT Universe what dost thou with thy dead!
Now thinking on the myriads that have gone
Into a seeming blank oblivion,

With here and there a most resplendent head, -
Eyes of such trancing sweetness, or so dread,
That made the soul to quake who looked thereon, —
All utterly wiped out, dismissed, and done;
Lost, speechless, viewless, and forever fled!
Myriad on myriad, past the power to count;
Where are they, thou dumb Nature? Do they shine,
Released from separate life, in summer airs,
On moony seas, in dawns? or up the stairs
Of spiritual being slowly mount

And by degrees grow more and more divine?

II

Ah, thou wilt never answer to our call,

Thou Voiceless One- naught in thee can be stirred,
What tho' the soul, like to a frightened bird,

Dash itself wildly 'gainst thy mountain-wall.
From Nature comes no answer, tho' we fall
In utmost anguish praying to be heard,
Or peer below, or our brave spirits gird.
For steep and starry flight; 't is silent all.

UNDYING LIGHT

In vain to question

save the heart of man,

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The throbbing human heart, that still doth keep Its truth, love, hope, its high and quenchless faith. By day, by night, when all else faints in sleep, "Naught is but Life," it cries; "there is no death; Life, Life doth only live, since Life began."

THE FREED SPIRIT

BROTHER of sorrow and mortality!

Not always shall we chide the failing flesh
That lets the netted soul to silence fly,

Like a wild bird that breaks the treacherous mesh; Not always shall men curse in stormy sky

The laughter and the fury of a Power

That sees its chance-born children sink and die
Hurling or death or life for dole or dower.
Who deep his spirit searches can deny

O nevermore, that life doth leave a trace Of something not all heavenly; tho' we try Daily to turn toward Heaven a stedfast face. Even grief doth soil us with its poisonous breath – Then free our spirits utterly, pure Death!

UNDYING LIGHT

I

WHEN in the golden western summer skies
A flaming glory starts, and slowly fades
Through crimson tone on tone to deeper shades,
There falls a silence, while the daylight dies

Lingering but not with human agonies

That tear the soul, or terror that degrades;
A holy peace the failing world pervades,
Nor any fear of that which onward lies.

For well, ah well, the darkened vale recalls

A thousand times ten thousand vanished suns; Ten thousand sunsets from whose blackened walls Reflamed the white and living day that runs,

In light which brings all beauty to the birth,
Deathless forever round the ancient earth.

II

O Thou the Lord and Maker of life and light!
Full heavy are the burdens that do weigh
Our spirits earthward, as through twilight gray
We journey to the end and rest of night;
Tho' well we know to the deep inward sight

Darkness is but Thy shadow, and the day
Where Thou art never dies, but sends its ray
Through the wide universe with restless might.
O Lord of Light, steep Thou our souls in Thee!
That when the daylight trembles into shade,
And falls the silence of mortality,

And all is done, we shall not be afraid,

But pass from light to light; from earth's dull gleam Into the very heart and heaven of our dream.

LYRICS