Roses and larkspur
And slender, serried lilies;
I wonder whether
These are worth your attention.
Consider it, and if not—

From a thatched hall, locked deep in verdant haze of pine,
its sounds escape from suffering: the bell before the dawn.
Sent far by the wind, its tolling startles this wanderer from his dreams.
Surely it would stir even monsters of the sea or dragons in the valley stream.

Restore to me the freshness of my youth,
And give me back my soul's keen edge again,
That time has blunted! O, my early truth,—
Shall I not you regain?
Ah, mine has been a wasted life at best,
All unreality and long unrest;
Yes, I have lived in vain!

But now no more in vain;—my soul, awake,
Shake off the snare, untwist the fastening chain:
Arise, go forth, the selfish slumber break,
Thy idle dreams restrain!
Still half thy life before thee lies untrod,
Live for the endless living, live for God!—
I must not live in vain!

He liveth, who was dead:
The bars of hell are riven:
The gloom of centuries is fled,
The light hath dawn'd from heaven.

Among His own He stands,
Oh why those faithless fears?
He shows His side and feet and hands,
And dries the fount of tears.

Peace, blessèd peace, first sung
By angels at His birth,
Now drops melodious from His tongue,
Like balm for all the earth.

He clothes them with the power
Of His forgiving love,
As clothed at His baptismal hour
With unction of the Dove.

The Light hath burst its prison

Truly a cottage
where
the leaves
on the grasses
have
blossomed as words—
a place, too,
blessed abundantly
by the work
of rain and dew.

Do not deny your dreams
That are the absurd release
From worldly wisdom themes
To paradoxic peace.

When sleep invites your mind
To push the unhaspèd door,
Be glad to leave behind
The unrest of Evermore.

There in that reasonless clime
You are yourself; and thither
You float, set free from Time
And all its whence and whither.

Farewell to hands and feet;
Good-bye to mouth and eyes.
Dreamer, go forth to greet
What world within you lies.

Red cradle of the night,
In you
The dusky child
Sleeps fast till his might
Shall be piled
Sinew on sinew.

Red cradle of the night,
The dusky child
Sleeping sits upright.
Lo! how
The winds blow now!
He pillows back;
The winds are again mild.

When he stretches his arms out,
Red cradle of the night,
The alarms shout
From bare tree to tree,
Wild
In afright!
Mighty shall he be,
Red cradle of the night,
The dusky child! !

What wouldst thou have, O soul,
Thou weary soul?
Lo! I have sought for rest
On the earth's heaving breast,
From pole to pole.
Sleep—I had been with her,
But she gave dreams;
Death—nay, the rest he gives
Rest only seems.
Fair nature knows it not—
The grass is growing;
The blue air knows it not—
The winds are blowing:
Not in the changing sky,
The stormy sea,
Yet somewhere in God's wide world
Rest there must be
Within thy Saviour's Heart
Place all thy care,
And learn, O weary soul,
Thy rest is there.

Alas! Umaimah set firm her face to depart, and went:
gone is she, and when she sped, she left us with no farewell.
Her purpose was quickly shaped—no warning she gave her friends,
though there she had dwelt hard by, her camels all day with ours.
Yea, thus in our eyes she dwelt, from morning to noon and eve—
she brought to an end her tale, and fleeted, and left us lone.
So gone is Umaimah, gone, and leaves here a heart in pain:
my life was to yearn for her, and now its delight is fled.

She won me whenas, shamefaced—no maid to let fall her veil,

In a land beyond sight or conceiving,
In a land where no blight is, no wrong,
No darkness, no graves, and no grieving,
There lies the great ocean of song.
And its waves, oh, its waves unbeholden
By any save gods, and their kind,
Are not blue, are not green, but are golden,
Like moonlight and sunlight combined.

It was whispered to me that their waters
Were made from the gathered-up tears,
That were wept by the sons and the daughters
Of long-vanished eras and spheres.
Like white sands of heaven the spray is
That falls all the happy day long,