It's good to be the wild bird
To pierce horizons a-far,
To hurl through night and sunlight
As sure as the flight of a star,
To pour down out of heaven
As sheep pour out of a fold
Where lone lakes lie in the sunset
A-ripple with fluctuant gold, —
To dive and cry and scurry
And shift in a joyous fleet
Where the sudden-pattering rainstorm
Roars by on a million feet!

Great Spirit, when I soar away
Beyond the confines of this Day,
And sing because my earth-life's done,
And gaze back at the lessening sun;
I pray that thou wilt make me free
To roam through all infinity
Where comets roar with maddened hair
While the stars turn pale and stare
Like huddled herds of frightened sheep —
Else, give me, Lord, eternal sleep:
I do not care in heaven to bide
Forever by The Bridegroom's side.

This spirit-choking atmosphere
With deadly serpent-coil
Entwines my soaring-upwardness
And chains me to the soil,
Where'er I seek with eager stride
To gain yon gleaming height,
These noisesome fetters coil aloft
And snare my buoyant flight.

O, why these aspirations bold,
These rigours of desire,
That surge within so ceaselessly
Like living tongues of fire?
And why these glowing forms of hope
That scintillate and shine,
If naught of all that burnished dream
Can evermore be mine?

Te verò appello sanctissimum F LUMEN , tibique futura prædico: torrenti sanguine plenus ad ripas usque erumpes, undæque divinæ non solum polluentur sanguine, sed totæ rumpentur, et viris multo major erit numerus sepultorum. Quid fles, O Asclepi?—T HE A SCLEPIAN Dialogue .

FIRST VOICE .

(From Germany.)

 Flash the sword!—and even as thunder
  Utter ye one living voice,—
 While the watching nations wonder,
  Hills of Fatherland, rejoice:

All day the world's mad mocking strife,
The venomed prick of probing knife,
The baleful, subtle leer of scorn
That rims the world from morn to morn,
While reptile-visions writhe and creep
Into the very arms of sleep
To quench the fitful burnished gleams:
A crucifixion in my dreams!

Hear their viol-voices ringing
Down the corridor of years,
As they lift their twilight faces
Through a mist of falling tears!

Let me not hate, although the bruising world decries my peace,
Gives me no quarter, hounds me while I sleep;
Would snuff the candles of my soul and sear my inmost dreamings.

Let me not hate, though girt by vipers, green and hissing through the dark;
I fain must love. God help me keep the altar-gleams that flicker wearily, anon,
On down the world's grim night!

Where is the perfect State
Early most blest and late,
Perfect and bright?
'Tis where no Palace stands
Trembling on shifting sands
Morning and night.
'Tis where the soil is free,
Where, far as eye may see,
Scattered o'er hill and lea,
Homesteads abound;
Where clean and broad and sweet
(Market, square, lane, and street,
Belted by leagues of wheat),
Cities are found.

Where is the perfect State
Early most blest and late,
Gentle and good?
'Tis where no lives are seen
Huddling in lanes unseen,

Spirit of the great brow!
Fire hath thy City now:
She shakes the sad world with her troubled scream!
O spirit who loved best
This City of the West,
Hark! loud she shattered cries — great
Queen of thy great Dream,

But, as she passes by
To the earth's scornful cry,
What are those Shapes who walk behind so wan? —
Martyrs and prophets born
Out of her night and morn:
Have we forgot them yet? — these, the great friends of Man.

We name them as they go,

Back on the wrong line, that was all,
Back in the morning, dusky and drear,
Simple enough such a thing you may call,
But it cost us the life of Duncan Weir.

He was our mate for many a day;
Never a steadier man on the line,
First at his work on the iron way,
Whether the morning was stormy or fine.

Quiet, yet fond of a laugh and a joke,
Though at times he took other moods, and then
He would only look up for a five minutes' smoke,
Then take to the shovel and pick again.

We liked him, for Duncan was kind of heart,