THINE EYES STILL SHONE. Was woven still by the snow-white choir. At last she came to his hermitage, THINE eyes still shone for me, though far Like the bird from the woodlands to the LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon redcloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down; Nor knowest thou what argument I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye. cage ; The gay enchantment was undone, Then I said, "I covet truth; As I spoke, beneath my feet THE PROBLEM. I LIKE a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles, Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowléd churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure? Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, The canticles of love and woe. The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity. Himself from God he could not free; Of leaves, and feathers from her breast; RALPH WALDO EMERSON. To her old leaves new myriads? These temples grew as grows the grass; Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. Girds with one flame the countless host, Trances the heart through chanting choirs, And through the priest the mind inspires. The word unto the prophet spoken BOSTON HYMN. THE word of the Lord by night As they sat by the seaside, And filled their hearts with flame. God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor. 201 Think ye I made this ball My angel, his name is Freedom,— Lo! I uncover the land, Which I hid of old time in the West, As the sculptor uncovers the statue When he has wrought his best; I show Columbia, of the rocks I will divide my goods; Call in the wretch and the slave: None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have. I will have never a noble, No lineage counted great; Fishers and choppers and ploughmen Shall constitute a state. Go, cut down trees in the forest, And trim the straightest boughs; Cut down trees in the forest, And build me a wooden house. Call the people together, The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest-field, Hireling, and him that hires; And here in a pine state-house They shall choose men to rule In every needful faculty, In church and state and school. Lo, now! if these poor men And make just laws below the sun, And ye shall succor men ; "T is nobleness to serve; Help them who cannot help again: Beware from right to swerve. How it swells! How it dwells ROBERT BROWNING. What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire. Leaping higher, higher, higher, And a resolute endeavor now to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. What a tale their terror tells 203 At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats Is a groan. And the people, -ah, the people, - And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, On the human heart a stone, They are neither man nor woman, They are neither brute nor human, They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; A pæan from the bells! With the pean of the bells! To the pean of the bells,— Keeping time, time, time, To the throbbing of the bells, -Of the bells, bells, bells, |