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.'

It 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?

THE SHADOW1.

I dreamed a dream: I dreamt that I espied,
Upon a stone that was not rolled aside,

A Shadow sit upon a grave-a Shade,

As thin, as unsubstantial, as of old

Came, the Greek poet told,

To lick the life-blood in the trench Ulysses made-
As pale, as thin, and said:

'I am the Resurrection of the Dead.

The night is past, the morning is at hand,

And I must in my proper semblance stand,

Appear brief space and vanish,-listen, this is true,

I am that Jesus whom they slew.'

And shadows dim, I dreamed, the dead apostles came, And bent their heads for sorrow and for shame

Sorrow for their great loss, and shame

For what they did in that vain name.

And in long ranges far behind there seemed

Pale vapoury angel forms; or was it cloud? that kept Strange watch; the women also stood beside and wept. 1 The MS. of this poem is incomplete.

And Peter spoke the word:

'O my own Lord,

What is it we must do?

Is it then all untrue?

Did we not see, and hear, and handle Thee,
Yea, for whole hours

Upon the Mount in Galilee,

On the lake shore, and here at Bethany,
When Thou ascended to Thy God and ours?'
And paler still became the distant cloud,

And at the word the women wept aloud.

And the Shade answered, 'What ye say I know not; But it is true

I am that Jesus whom they slew,

Whom ye have preached, but in what way I know not.'

And the great World, it chanced, came by that way,
And stopped, and looked, and spoke to the police,
And said the thing, for order's sake and peace,
Most certainly must be suppressed, the nuisance cease.
His wife and daughter must have where to pray,
And whom to pray to, at the least one day
In seven, and something sensible to say.

Whether the fact so many years ago

Had, or not, happened, how was he to know?
Yet he had always heard that it was so.
As for himself, perhaps it was all one;
And yet he found it not unpleasant, too,
On Sunday morning in the roomy pew,
To see the thing with such decorum done.
As for himself, perhaps it was all one;
Yet on one's death-bed all men always said
It was a comfortable thing to think upon
The atonement and the resurrection of the dead.
So the great World as having said his say,
Unto his country-house pursued his way.
And on the grave the Shadow sat all day.

And the poor Pope was sure it must be so,
Else wherefore did the people kiss his toe?
The subtle Jesuit cardinal shook his head,
And mildly looked and said,

It mattered not a jot

Whether the thing, indeed, were so or not;

Religion must be kept up, and the Church preserved, And for the people this best served.

And then he turned, and added most demurely, 'Whatever may befal,

We Catholics need no evidence at all,

The holy father is infallible, surely!'

And English canons heard,
And quietly demurred.

Religion rests on evidence, of course,
And on inquiry we must put no force.
Difficulties still, upon whatever ground,
Are likely, almost certain, to be found.
The Theist scheme, the Pantheist, one and all,
Must with, or e'en before, the Christian fall.
And till the thing were plainer to our eyes,
To disturb faith was surely most unwise.
As for the Shade, who trusted such narration?
Except, of course, in ancient revelation.

And dignitaries of the Church came by.

It had been worth to some of them, they said,
Some hundred thousand pounds a year a head.
If it fetched so much in the market, truly,
'Twas not a thing to be given up unduly.
It had been proved by Butler in one way,
By Paley better in a later day;

It had been proved in twenty ways at once,
By many a doctor plain to many a dunce;
There was no question but it must be so.

And the Shade answered, that He did not know; He had no reading, and might be deceived,

But still He was the Christ, as He believed.

And women, mild and pure,

Forth from still homes and village schools did pass,
And asked, if this indeed were thus, alas,

What should they teach their children and the poor?
The Shade replied, He could not know,

But it was truth, the fact was so.

Who had kept all commandments from his youth
Yet still found one thing lacking,-even Truth :
And the Shade only answered, 'Go, make haste,
Enjoy thy great possessions as thou may'st.'

[From Dipsychus.]
ISOLATION.

Where are the great, whom thou would'st wish to praise thee? Where are the pure, whom thou would'st choose to love thee! Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee,

Whose high commands would cheer, whose chidings raise thee? Seek, seeker, in thyself; submit to find

In the stones, bread, and life in the blank mind.

IN VENICE; DIPSYCHUS SPEAKS.

O happy hours!

O compensation ample for long days.

Of what impatient tongues call wretchedness!
O beautiful, beneath the magic moon,

To walk the watery way of palaces !

O beautiful, o'ervaulted with gemmed blue,

This spacious court, with colour and with gold,
With cupolas, and pinnacles, and points.
And crosses multiplex, and tips and balls
(Wherewith the bright stars unreproving mix,
Nor scorn by hasty eyes to be confused);
Fantastically perfect this low pile
Of Oriental glory; these long ranges

Of classic chiselling, this gay flickering crowd,