The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,

And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.

A man becomes aware of his life's flow,

And hears its winding murmur; and he sees

The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase

That flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.

THE FUTURE.

[Empedocles etc. 1852.]

A WANDERER is man from his birth.

He was born in a ship

On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and joy

He spreads out his arms to the light,

Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.

Whether he wakes

Where the snowy mountainous pass,

Echoing the screams of the eagles,
Hems in its gorges the bed

Of the new-born clear-flowing stream;
Whether he first sees light

Where the river in gleaming rings

Sluggishly winds through the plain;

Whether in sound of the swallowing sea

As is the world on the banks,

So is the mind of the man.

Vainly does each, as he glides,
Fable and dream

Of the lands which the river of Time

Had left ere he woke on its breast,

Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed. Only the tract where he sails

He wots of; only the thoughts,

Raised by the objects he passes, are his.

Who can see the green earth any more
As she was by the sources of Time?
Who imagines her fields as they lay
In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?
Who thinks as they thought,

The tribes who then roam'd on her breast,
Her vigorous, primitive sons?

What girl

Now reads in her bosom as clear

As Rebekah read, when she sate
At eve by the palm-shaded well?
Who guards in her breast
As deep, as pellucid a spring
Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure?

What bard,

At the height of his vision, can deem

Of God, of the world, of the soul,
With a plainness as near,

As flashing as Moses felt,

When he lay in the night by his flock
On the starlit Arabian waste?

Can rise and obey

The beck of the Spirit like him?

This tract which the river of Time
Now flows through with us, is the plain.
Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.
Border'd by cities and hoarse

With a thousand cries is its stream.

And we on its breast, our minds

Are confused as the cries which we hear, Changing and shot as the sights which we see.

And we say that repose has fled

For ever the course of the river of Time.
That cities will crowd to its edge

In a blacker, incessanter line;

That the din will be more on its banks,

Denser the trade on its stream,

Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead.

That never will those on its breast
See an ennobling sight,

Drink of the feeling of quiet again.

But what was before us we know not,
And we know not what shall succeed.

Haply, the river of Time

As it grows, as the towns on its marge
Fling their wavering lights

On a wider, statelier stream-
May acquire, if not the calm
Of its early mountainous shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.

And the width of the waters, the hush
Of the grey expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with foa
As it draws to the Ocean, may strike

Peace to the soul of the man on its breast-
As the pale waste widens around him,
As the banks fade dimmer away,

As the stars come out, and the night-wind
Brings up the stream

Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.

SAINT BRANDAN.

[Fraser's Magazine 1860.]

SAINT BRANDAN sails the northern main;
The brotherhoods of saints are glad.
He greets them once, he sails again;
So late!-such storms!-The Saint is mad!

He heard, across the howling seas,
Chime convent-bells on wintry nights;
He saw, on spray-swept Hebrides,
Twinkle the monastery-lights.

But north, still north, Saint Brandan steer'd-
And now no bells, no convents more!
The hurtling Polar lights are near'd,
The sea without a human shore.

At last-(it was the Christmas night;
Stars shone after a day of storm)—
He sees float past an iceberg white,
And on it-Christ!-a living form.

That furtive mien, that scowling eye,
Of hair that red and tufted fell-
It is-Oh, where shall Brandan fly?-
The traitor Judas, out of hell!

Palsied with terror, Brandan sate;

The moon was bright, the iceberg near.

He hears a voice sigh humbly: "Wait!
By high permission I am here.

"One moment wait, thou holy man!
On earth my crime, my death, they knew;
My name is under all men's ban—

Ah, tell them of my respite too!

"Tell them, one blessed Christmas-night
(It was the first after I came,
Breathing self-murder, frenzy, spite,
To rue my guilt in endless flame)—

"I felt, as I in torment lay

'Mid the souls plagued by heavenly power, An angel touch mine arm, and say: Go hence and cool thyself an hour!

"Ah, whence this mercy, Lord?' I said.

The Leper recollect, said he,

Who ask'd the passers-by for aid,
In Joppa, and thy charity.

"Then I remember'd how I went,
In Joppa, through the public street,
One morn when the sirocco spent
Its storms of dust with burning heat;

"And in the street a leper sate,
Shivering with fever, naked, old;
Sand raked his sores from heel to pate,
The hot wind fever'd him five-fold.

"He gazed upon me as I pass'd,
And murmur'd: Help me, or I die!—
To the poor wretch my cloak I cast,
Saw him look eased, and hurried by.