With eye down-dropt, if then this earthly mind If well-assured 't is but profanely bold In thought's abstractest forms to seem to see, O not unowned, Thou shalt unnamed forgive, Shalt make that work be prayer. Nor times shall lack, when while the work it plies, But, as Thou willest, give or e'en forbear So, with Thy blessing blest, that humbler prayer THE HIDDEN LOVE. O LET me love my love unto myself alone, And know my knowledge to the world unknown; No witness to my vision call, Beholding, unbeheld of all; And worship Thee, with Thee withdrawn apart, Whoe'er, Whate'er Thou art, Within the closest veil of mine own inmost heart. What is it then to me If others are inquisitive to see? Why should I quit my place to go and ask Leave my own buried roots to go And see that brother plants shall grow; And turn away from Thee, O Thou most Holy Light, Around their proper sun, Deserting Thee, and being undone. O let me love my love unto myself alone, And know my knowledge to the world unknown; As but man can or ought, Within the abstracted'st shrine of my least breathed-on thought. Better it were, thou sayest, to consent; Feast while we may, and live ere life be spent ; Close up clear eyes, and call the unstable sure, And lose in Action, Passion, Talk, the soul. Nay, better far to mark off thus much air, And say, what is not, will be by-and-by. 'WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS, neitheR SHADOW OF TURNING. Ir fortifies my soul to know That, though I perish, Truth is so: 'perchè PENSA? PENSANDO S'INVECCHIA? To spend uncounted years of pain, In working out in heart and brain FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE. THE REIGN OF LAW. THE dawn goes up the sky Like any other day; And these have only come And when we die, we die. Resigned to fact we wander hither; We ask no more the whence and whither. 'Vain questions! from the first Put, and no answer found. The myriad years have whirled her hither, 'We know but what we see Like cause, and like event; One constant force runs on Transmuted, but unspent: From her own laws the mind Infers a conscious plan; Deducing from within God's special thought for man : The natural choice that brought us hither Is silent on the whence and whither. 'If God there be, or Gods, The self-moved force that bore us hither Ah, which is likelier truth, That law should hold its way, Or, for this one of all, No fair fond hope allures us hither; The law is dumb on whence and whither.' Then, wherefore are ye come? Why watch a worn-out corse? Why weep a ripple past Down the long stream of force? If life is that which keeps Each organism whole, No atom may be traced Of what he thought the soul: It had its term of passage hither, But knew no whence, and knows not whither. The forces that were Christ Have ta'en new forms and fled; The common sun goes up; The dead are with the dead. |