• The changing guests, each in a different mood,
• Sit at the roadside table and arise:
• And every life among them in likewise
• Is a soul's board set daily with new food.
• What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood
• How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
• Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
• Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?

• May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell
• 10 In separate living souls for joy or pain?
• Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
• Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
• And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
• Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.

   

• The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring;
• The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows
• Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;
• The summer clouds that visit every wing
• With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;
• The furtive flickering streams to light re-born
• 'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn,
• While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:—

• These ardour loves, and memory: and when flown
• 10 All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight
• The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,
• Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone
• Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone;
• With ditties and with dirges infinite.

   

• The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring;
• The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows
• Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;
• The summer clouds that visit every wing
• With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;
• The furtive flickering streams to light re-born
• 'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn,
• While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:—

• These ardour loves, and memory: and when flown
• 10 All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight
• The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,
• Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone
• Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone;
• With ditties and with dirges infinite.

   

• As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
• Knows suddenly, to music high and soft,
• The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd
• Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
• With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope;
• Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laugh'd
• In speeeh; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft
• Together, within hopeless sight of hope
• For hours are silent:—So it happeneth
• 10 When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
• After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
• Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad
• maze
• Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
• Follow the desultory feet of Death?

   

• From child to youth; from youth to arduous man;
• From lethargy to fever of the heart;
• From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;
• From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban;—
• Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran
• Till now. Alas, the soul!—how soon must she
• Accept her primal immortality,—
• The flesh resume its dust whence it began?

• O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
• 10 O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
• Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath:
• That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
• The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
• This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!

   

• Was that the landmark? What,—the foolish well
• Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink,
• But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink
• In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell,
• (And mine own image, had I noted well!)—
• Was that my point of turning?—I had thought
• The stations of my course should rise unsought,
• As altar-stone or ensigned citadel.

• But lo! the path is missed, I must go back,
• 10 And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring
• Which once I stained, which since may have grown
• black.
• Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing
• As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening,
• That the same goal is still on the same track.

   

• The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs
• Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow
• Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now
• Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
• Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,
• Or hath but memory of the day whose plough
• Sowed hunger once,—the night at length when
• thou,
• O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my
• prayers?

• How prickly were the growths which yet how
• smooth,
• 10 Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
• Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe!
• Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead
• Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,
• Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.

   

• This sunlight shames November where he grieves
• In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun
• The day, though bough with bough be over-run.
• But with a blessing every glade receives
• High salutation; while from hillock-eaves
• The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun,
• As if, being foresters of old, the sun
• Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves.

• Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic glass;
• 10 Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the
• dew;
• Till eve bring rest when other good things pass.
• And here the lost hours the lost hours renew
• While I still lead my shadow o'er the grass,
• Nor know, for longing, that which I should do.

   

• This feast-day of the sun, his altar there
• In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
• And I have loitered in the vale too long
• And gaze now a belated worshipper.
• Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
• So journeying, of his face at intervals
• Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,—
• A fiery bush with coruscating hair.

• And now that I have climbed and won this height,
• 10 I must tread downward through the sloping shade
• And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
• Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
• And see the gold air and the silver fade
• And the last bird fly into the last light.

       

• Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.
• Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
• Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
• Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
• May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
• Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
• We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are
• toll'd,
• Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.

• Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
• 10 My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase
• Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our
• way!
• Through many years they toil; then on a day
• They die not,—for their life was death,—but cease;
• And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.

   

• Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die.
• Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
• Is not the day which God's word promiseth
• To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
• Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
• Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
• Even at this moment haply quickeneth
• The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
• Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight
• here.
• 10 And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?
• Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to
• be
• Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
• Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
• Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.

   

• Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die.
• Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore,
• Thou say'st: “Man's measured path is all gone
• o'er:
• Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
• Man clomb until he touched the truth; and I,
• Even I, am he whom it was destined for.”
• How should this be? Art thou then so much more
• Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap
• thereby?

• Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed
• mound
• 10 Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
• Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
• Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
• And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues
• beyond,—
• Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more
• sea.

       

• Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
• For he it was (the aged legends say)
• Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
• Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
• Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
• How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
• Are symbols also in some deeper way,
• She looked through these to God and was God's
• priest.

• And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
• 10And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
• To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
• Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
• Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
• Ere the night cometh and she may not work.

   

• “I am not as these are,” the poet saith
• In youth's pride, and the painter, among men
• At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen,
• And shut about with his own frozen breath.
• To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith
• As poets,—only paint as painters,—then
• He turns in the cold silence; and again
• Shrinking, “I am not as these are,” he saith.

• And say that this is so, what follows it?
• 10 For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head,
• Such words were well; but they see on, and far.
• Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit
• Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead,—
• Say thou instead, “I am not as these are.”

   

• Though God, as one that is an householder,
• Called these to labour in his vineyard first,
• Before the husk of darkness was well burst
• Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
• (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, “Sir,
• Unto each man a penny:”) though the worst
• Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst:
• Though God hath since found none such as these
• were
• To do their work like them:—Because of this
• 10 Stand not ye idle in the market-place.
• Which of ye knoweth he is not that last
• Who may be first by faith and will?—yea, his
• The hand which after the appointed days
• And hours shall give a Future to their Past?

   

• Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
• Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
• Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck
• awe,
• I drew it in as simply as my breath.
• Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,
• The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw,
• By sea or sky or woman, to one law,
• The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.

• This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise
• 10 Thy voice and hand shake still,—long known to
• thee
• By flying hair and fluttering hem,—the beat
• Following her daily of thy heart and feet,
• How passionately and irretrievably,
• In what fond flight, how many ways and days!