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With eye down-dropt, if then this earthly mind
Speechless remain, or speechless e'en depart;
Nor seek to see for what of earthly kind

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If well-assured 't is but profanely bold

In thought's abstractest forms to seem to see,
It dare not dare the dread communion hold
In ways unworthy Thee,

O not unowned, Thou shalt unnamed forgive,
In worldly walks the prayerless heart prepare;
And if in work its life it seem to live,

Shalt make that work be prayer.

Nor times shall lack, when while the work it plies,
Unsummoned powers the blinding film shall part,
And scarce by happy tears made dim, the eyes
In recognition start.

But, as Thou willest, give or e'en forbear
The beatific supersensual sight,

So, with Thy blessing blest, that humbler prayer
Approach Thee morn and night.

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And worship Thee, with Thee withdrawn apart,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
If other men are working at their task?

Leave my own buried roots to go

And see that brother plants shall grow;

And turn away from Thee, O Thou most Holy Light,
To look if other orbs their orbits keep aright,

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;
And worship Thee, O hid One, O much sought,

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,
The unlovely lovely, and the filthy pure;
In self-belyings, self-deceivings roll,

And lose in Action, Passion, Talk, the soul.

Nay, better far to mark off thus much air,
And call it Heaven: place bliss and glory there;
Fix perfect homes in the unsubstantial sky,

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:
That, howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall
That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.

'perchè PENSA? PENSANDO S'INVECCHIA?

To spend uncounted years of pain,
Again, again, and yet again,

In working out in heart and brain
The problem of our being here;
To gather facts from far and near,
Upon the mind to hold them clear,
And, knowing more may yet appear,
Unto one's latest breath to fear,
The premature result to draw —
Is this the object, end, and law,
And purpose of our being here?

FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE.

THE REIGN OF LAW.

THE dawn goes up the sky

Like any other day;

And these have only come
To mourn Him where he lay.
'We ne'er have seen the law
Reversed, 'neath which we lie;
Exceptions none are found,

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.
He binds us with the chain
Wherewith himself is bound.
From west to east the earth
Unrolls her primal curve;
The sun himself were vexed
Did she one furlong swerve:

The myriad years have whirled her hither,
But tell not of the whence and whither.

'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,
Without our science lies;
We cannot see or touch,
Measure, nor analyze.
Life is but what we live,
We know but what we know,
Closed in these bounds alone
Whether God be, or no:

The self-moved force that bore us hither
Reveals no whence, and hints no whither.

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Ah, which is likelier truth,

That law should hold its way,

Or, for this one of all,
Life reassert her sway?
Like any other morn
The sun goes up the sky;
No crisis marks the day;
For when we die, we die.

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.

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