So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

THE wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs, That slope through darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call

Evil shall end in Good.

To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope.

41

"So careful of the type?" but no.
From scarpèd cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.

"Thou makest thine appeal to me :
I bring to life, I bring to death :
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more." And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes,

Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed,
And love Creation's final law-
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed —

Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or sealed within the iron hills?

No more?

A monster then, a dream, A discord. Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime, Were mellow music matched with him.

Oh life as futile, then, as frail !

Oh for thy voice to soothe and bless! What hope of answer, or redress? BEHIND THE VEIL, BEHIND THE VEIL!

Oppositions of Science falsely so called. 43

OPPOSITIONS OF SCIENCE FALSELY SO CALLED.

TRUST I have not wasted breath: I think we are not wholly brain, Magnetic mockeries; not in vain, Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death.

Not only cunning casts in clay :

Let Science prove we are, and then
What matters Science unto men,
At least to me? I would not stay.

Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,
But I was born to other things.

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY.

HE human spirits saw I on a day,
Sitting and looking each a different

way;

And hardly tasking, subtly questioning,
Another spirit went around the ring
To each and each and as he ceased his say,
Each after each, I heard them singly sing,
Some querulously high, some softly, sadly

low,

We know not,
We know not,

what avails to know?

wherefore need we know? This answer gave they still unto his suing,— We know not, let us do as we are doing.

Dost thou not know that these things only seem?

I know not, let me dream my dream.
Are dust and ashes fit to make a treasure?
I know not, let me take my pleasure.
What shall avail the knowledge thou hast
sought?

I know not, let me think my thought.