satisfy

The endless craving of the soul but love?
Give me thy love, or but the hope of that
Which must be evermore my nature's
goal.'

After a little pause she said again,
But with a glimpse of sadness in her

But the low trickling rustle of the leaves, And far away upon an emerald slope The falter of an idle shepherd's pipe.

Now, in those days of simpleness and faith,

Men did not think that happy things were dreams

Because they overstepped the narrow bourn

Of likelihood, but reverently deemed
Nothing too wondrous or too beautiful
To be the guerdon of a daring heart.
So Rhocus made no doubt that he was
blest,

And all along unto the city's gate
Earth seemed to spring beneath him as
he walked,

The clear, broad sky looked bluer than its wont,

And he could scarce believe he had not wings,

Such sunshine seemed to glitter through

dice, side.

He joined them, and forgot all else be

The dice were rattling at the merriest,

And Rhocus, who had met but sorry luck,

Just laughed in triumph at a happy throw,

When through the room there hummed a yellow bee

That buzzed about his ear with down. dropped legs

As if to light. And Rhocus laughed and said,

Feeling how red and flushed he was with loss,

"By Venus! does he take me for a rose?"

And brushed him off with rough, impatient hand.

But still the bee came back, and thrice again

Rhocus did beat him off with growing wrath.

Then through the window flew the wounded bee,

And Rhocus, tracking him with angry eyes,

Saw a sharp mountain-peak of Thessaly Against the red disk of the setting sun, And instantly the blood sank from his heart,

As if its very walls had caved away. Without a word he turned, and, rushing forth,

Ran madly through the city and the gate, And o'er the plain, which now the wood's long shade,

By the low sun thrown forward broad and dim, Darkened wellnigh unto the city's wall.

Quite spent and out of breath he reached the tree, And, listening fearfully, he heard once

A cloud with molten gold o'errun,
Than him, a little burning islet,
A star above the coming sun.

For with a lark's heart he doth tower,
By a glorious upward instinct drawn ;
No bee nestles deeper in the flower

Than he in the bursting rose of dawn. No harmless dove, no bird that singeth, Shudders to see him overhead; The rush of his fierce swooping bringeth To innocent hearts no thrill of dread. Let fraud and wrong and baseness shiver, For still between them and the sky The falcon Truth hangs poised forever And marks them with his vengeful eye.

to sever,

And for himself find out the way divine; He never knew the aspirer's glorious pains,

He never earned the struggle's priceless gains.

O, block by block, with sore and sharp endeavor,

Lifelong we build these human natures up

Into a temple fit for Freedom's shrine, And Trial ever consecrates the cup Wherefrom we pour her sacrificial wine.

A GLANCE BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

WE see but half the causes of our deeds, Seeking them wholly in the outer life, And heedless of the encircling spiritworld,

Which, though unseen, is felt, and sows

in us

All germs of pure and world-wide pur

poses.

From one stage of our being to the next We pass unconscious o'er a slender bridge, The momentary work of unseen hands, Which crumbles down behind us; looking back,

We see the other shore, the gulf between, And, marvelling how we won to where we stand,

Content ourselves to call the builder Chance.

We trace the wisdom to the apple's fall, Not to the birth-throes of a mighty Truth

Which, for long ages in blank Chaos dumb,

Yet yearned to be incarnate, and had found

At last a spirit meet to be the womb From which it might be born to bless mankind,

Not to the soul of Newton, ripe with all The hoarded thoughtfulness of earnest years,

And waiting but one ray of sunlight

more

To blossom fully.

But whence came that ray? We call our sorrows Destiny, but ought Rather to name our high successes so. Only the instincts of great souls are Fate,

things,

Except by leave of us, could never be.
For Destiny is but the breath of God
Still moving in us, the last fragment left
Of our unfallen nature, waking oft
Within our thought, to beckon us be-
yond

The narrow circle of the seen and known,
And always tending to a noble end,
As all things must that overrule the soul,
And for a space unseat the helmsman,
Will.

The fate of England and of freedom once Seemed wavering in the heart of one plain man:

One step of his, and the great dial-hand, That marks the destined progress of the world

In the eternal round from wisdom on To higher wisdom, had been made to pause

A hundred years. That step he did not take,

He knew not why, nor we, but only
God,

And lived to make his simple oaken chair
More terrible and soberly august,
More full of majesty than any throne,
Before or after, of a British king.

Upon the pier stood two stern-visaged

men,

Looking to where a little craft lay moored,

Swayed by the lazy current of the Thames,

Which weltered by in muddy listlessness. Grave men they were, and battlings of fierce thought

Had trampled out all softness from their brows,

And ploughed rough furrows there before their time,

For other crop than such as home bred Peace

Sows broadcast in the willing soil of Youth.

Care, not of self, but for the commonweal,

Had robbed their eyes of youth, and left instead

A look of patient power and iron will, And something fiercer, too, that gave broad hint

Of the plain weapons girded at their sides.

(Though he despised such), were it only made

Of iron, or some serviceable stuff That would have matched his brownly rugged face.

The elder, although such he hardly seemed

(Care makes so little of some five short years),

Had a clear, honest face, whose roughhewn strength

Was mildened by the scholar's wiser heart

To sober courage, such as best befits The unsullied temper of a well-taught mind,

Yet so remained that one could plainly guess

The hushed volcano smouldering underneath.

He spoke the other, hearing, kept his

:

gaze

Still fixed, as on some problem in the sky.

"O CROMWELL, we are fallen on evil times!

There was a day when England had wide

room

For honest men as well as foolish kings: But now the uneasy stomach of the time Turns squeamish at them both. Therefore let us

Seek out that savage clime, where men as yet

Are free: there sleeps the vessel on the tide,

Her languid canvas drooping for the wind;

Will not say No to please a wayward king,

Nor will the winds turn traitors at his beck:

All things are fitly cared for, and the
Lord

Will watch as kindly o'er the exodus
Of us his servants now, as in old time.
We have no cloud or fire, and haply we
May not pass dry-shod through the
ocean-stream;

But, saved or lost, all things are in His hand."

So spake he, and meantime the other stood

With wide gray eyes still reading the blank air,

As if upon the sky's blue wall he saw Some mystic sentence, written by a hand, Such as of old made pale the Assyrian king,

Girt with his satraps in the blazing feast.

"HAMPDEN! a moment since, my purpose was To fly with thee, for I will call it flight,

Nor flatter it with any smoother name, But something in me bids me not to go; And I am one, thou knowest, who, unmoved

By what the weak deem omens, yet give

heed

Give us but that, and what need we to fear

Not,

as of old the walls of Thebes were built,

minstrel twanging, but, if need should be,

With the more potent music of our swords?

Think'st thou that score of men beyond

the sea

Claim more God's care than all of England here?

No: when He moves His arm, it is to aid

Whole peoples, heedless if a few be crushed,

As some are ever, when the destiny Of man takes one stride onward nearer home.

Believe me, 't is the mass of men He loves;

And, where there is most sorrow and most want,

Where the high heart of man is trodden down

The most, 't is not because He hides His face

From them in wrath, as purblind teachers prate :

Not so there most is He, for there is

He

A noble purpose to a noble end, Although it be the gallows or the block? 'T is only Falsehood that doth ever need These outward shows of gain to bolster her.

Be it we prove the weaker with our swords;

Truth only needs to be for once spoke out,

And there's such music in her, such strange rhythm,

As makes men's memories her joyous slaves,

And clings around the soul, as the sky clings

Round the mute earth, forever beautiful,

And, if o'erclouded, only to burst forth More all-embracingly divine and clear : Get but the truth once uttered, and 't is like

To put it into act, else worse than naught?

We learn our souls more, tossing for an hour

Upon this huge and ever-vexed sea Of human thought, where kingdoms go to wreck

Like fragile bubbles yonder in the stream,

Than in a cycle of New England sloth,
Broke only by a petty Indian war,
Or quarrel for a letter more or less
In some hard word, which, spelt in
either way,

Not their most learned clerks can understand.

new men;