Vers. The Church with psalms must shout,
No door can keep them out :
But above all, the heart

Must bear the longest part.

Cho. Let all the world in every corner sing,

My God and King.

Herbert.

206

Matins

I CANNOT ope mine eyes,

But thou art ready there to catch

My morning-soul and sacrifice;

Then we must needs for that day make a match.

My God, what is a heart?

Silver, or gold, or precious stone,

Or star, or rainbow, or a part
Of all these things, or all of them in one?

My God, what is a heart,

That thou shouldst it so eye, and Woo,
Pouring upon it all thy art,

As if that thou hadst nothing else to do?

Indeed, man's whole estate Amounts (and richly) to serve thee : He did not heaven and earth create, Yet studies them, not Him by whom they be.

Teach me thy love to know;

That this new light, which now I see, May both the work and workman show : Then by a sunbeam I will climb to thee.

Herbert.

207

208

O LIVING Will that shalt endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock,

Rise in the spiritual rock,

Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure,

That we may lift from out of dust

A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works; and trust.

With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved;
Until we close with all we loved
And all we flow from, soul in soul.

The Song of Honour

I CLIMB'D a hill as light fell short,

Tennyson.

And rooks came home in scramble sort,
And fill'd the trees and flapp'd and fought
And sang themselves to sleep;

An owl from nowhere with no sound
Swung by and soon was nowhere found,
I heard him calling half-way round,
Holloing loud and deep;

A pair of stars, faint pins of light,
Then many a star, sail'd into sight,
And all the stars, the flower of night,
Were round me at a leap;

To tell how still the valleys lay
I heard a watchdog miles away. .
And bells of distant sheep.

I heard no more of bird or bell,
The mastiff in a slumber fell,
I stared into the sky,

As wondering men have always done
Since beauty and the stars were one,
Though none so hard as I.

It seem'd, so still the valleys were,
As if the whole world knelt at prayer,
Save me and me alone;

So

pure and wide that silence was
I fear'd to bend a blade of grass,
And there I stood like stone.

There, sharp and sudden, there I heard-
Ah! some wild lovesick singing bird
Woke singing in the trees?

The nightingale and babble-wren
Were in the English greenwood then,
And you heard one of these?

The babble-wren and nightingale
Sang in the Abyssinian vale
That season of the year !

Yet, true enough, I heard them plain,
I heard them both again, again,

As sharp and sweet and clear

As if the Abyssinian tree

Had thrust a bough across the sea,

Had thrust a bough across to me

I heard them both, and Oh! I heard
The song of every singing bird

That sings beneath the sky,

And with the song of lark and wren
The song of mountains, moths and men
And seas and rainbows vie!

I heard the universal choir,

The Sons of Light exalt their Sire
With universal song,

Earth's lowliest and loudest notes,

Her million times ten million throats
Exalt Him loud and long,

And lips and lungs and tongues of Grace
From every part and every place
Within the shining of His face,
The universal throng.

I heard the hymn of being sound
From every well of honour found
In human sense and soul:

The song of poets when they write
The testament of Beautysprite
Upon a flying scroll,

The song of painters when they take
A burning brush for Beauty's sake
And limn her features whole-

The song of men divinely wise
Who look and see in starry skies
Not stars so much as robins' eyes,
And when these pale away
Hear flocks of shiny pleiades
Among the plums and apple trees
Sing in the summer day—

The song of all both high and low

To some blest vision true,

The song of beggars when they throw

The crust of pity all men owe

To hungry sparrows in the snow,
Old beggars hungry too-

The song of kings of kingdoms when
They rise above their fortune men,
And crown themselves anew,—

The song of courage,

heart and will

And gladness in a fight,

Of men who face a hopeless hill
With sparking and delight,

The bells and bells of song that ring

Round banners of a cause or king
From armies bleeding white—

The song of sailors every one

When monstrous tide and tempest run
At ships like bulls at red,

When stately ships are twirl'd and spun
Like whipping-tops and help there's none
And mighty ships ten thousand ton
Go down like lumps of lead—

And song of fighters stern as they
At odds with fortune night and day,
Cramm'd up in cities grim and grey
As thick as bees in hives,
Hosannas of a lowly throng

Who sing unconscious of their song,

Whose lips are in their lives—

And song of some at holy war

With spells and ghouls more dread by far

Than deadly seas and cities are,

Or hordes of quarrelling kings

The song of fighters great and small,
The song of pretty fighters all
And high heroic things-

The song of lovers-who knows how
Twitch'd up from place and time
Upon a sigh, a blush, a vow,

A curve or hue of cheek or brow,
Borne up and off from here and now
Into the void sublime!