The Latter Law.

I.

WHEN, Schooled to resignation, I had ceased yearn for my lost Eden; when I knew

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No loving Spirit brooded in the blue,

And none should see His coming in the East,
I looked for comfort in my creed; I sought
To draw all nature nearer, to replace

The sweet old myths, the tenderness, the grace Of God's dead world of faith and reverent thought.

Oh, joy! I found the stern new Law reveal
Romance more rare than poesy creates :

Your blood, it said, is kindred with the sap
Which throbs within the cedar, and mayhap
In some dim wise the tree reciprocates,
Even as a Dryad, all the love you feel!

II.

You and the great glad Earth are kith and kin;
There is one base, one scheme of life, one hope
On that and this side of the microscope.
All things, now wholes, have parts of many been
And all shall be. A disk of Homer's blood

May redden a daisy on an English lawn,
And what was Chaucer glimmer in the dawn
To-morrow o'er the plains where Ilion stood.

No jot is lost, or scorned, or disallowed;
One Law reigns over all. Take you no care,

For while all beings change one life endures,
And a new cycle waits for you and yours
To melt away, like streaks of morning cloud,
Into the infinite azure of things that were.

III.

And soon the selfish clinging unto sense,
The longing that this ME should never fail,
Loosed quivering hands, for oh! of what avail
Were such survival of intelligence,

If all the great and good of days gone by—

Plato, Hypatia, Shakespeare—had surceased, Had mingled with the cloud, the plant, the beast, And God were but a mythos of the sky?

And when I thought, o'ershadowed with strange awe,
How Christ was dead-had ceased in utter woe,

With that great cry "Forsaken!" on the cross,
I felt at first a sense of bitter loss,

And then grew passive, saying, "Be it so!
'Tis one with Christ and Judas. 'Tis the law!"

IV.

But when my child, my one girl-babe lay dead-
The blossom of me, my dream and my desire—
And unshed tears burned in my eyes like fire,
And when my wife subdued her sobs, and said:
"Oh! husband, do not grieve, be comforted,

She is with Christ!" I laughed in my despair.

With Christ! O God! and where is Christ, and where

My poor dead babe? And where the countless dead?

The great glad Earth-my kin!—is glad as though No child had ever died; the heaven of May

Leans like a laughing face above my grief. Is she clean lost for ever? How shall I know? O Christ! art Thou still Christ?

pray

For unbelief or fulness of belief?

And shall I

The Donkey.

WHEN fishes flew and forests walked,
And figs grew upon thorn,

Some moment when the moon was blood

Then surely I was born;

With monstrous head and sickening cry

And ears like errant wings,

The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;

One far fierce hour and sweet; There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.

The Praise of Dust.

"WHAT of vile dust? the preacher said. Methought the whole world woke, The dead stone lived beneath my foot, And my whole body spoke.

"You, that play tyrant to the dust,
And stamp its wrinkled face,
This patient star that flings you not
Far into homeless space,

"Come down out of your dusty shrine The living dust to see,

The flowers that at your sermon's end

Stand blazing silently.

"Rich white and blood-red blossom stones, Lichens like fire encrust,

A gleam of blue, a glare of gold,
The vision of the dust.

"Pass them all by: till, as you come

Where, at a city's edge,

Under a tree—I know it well

Under a lattice ledge,