To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.

For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,

We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.

O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day! From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men

say.

New Gods are crowned in the city, their flowers have broken your rods; They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods. But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;

Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.

Time and the Gods are at strife: ye dwell in the midst thereof, Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.

I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,

Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease. Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take, The laurel, the palms and the pæan, the breast of the nymphs in the brake;

Breasts more soft than a dove's, that

tremble with tenderer breath; And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;

All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,

Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire. More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things? Nay, for a little we live, and life hath

But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.

Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end; For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend. Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;

But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides. O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods!

O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!

Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,

I kneel not, neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.

All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast

Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past: Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates, Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits: Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,

And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things, White-eyed and poisonous-finned, sharktoothed and serpentine-curled, Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world. The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;

In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey ; In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears; With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:

With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour; And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour: And its vapor and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be; And its noise as the noise in a dream:

and its depth as the roots of the sea: And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air: And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made bare.

Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods?

Though the fan of the high prests tread where tit jeis and our fredwabers Trod.

Though these 1623 were Gods are dead. and the being lead art a God. Though before the the thrcel Cythe rear be fallen, and hillen her head.

i

heart.

Yet thy kingdom slll pass. Galilean, thy dea i shall go down to thee dead. Of the maider 1y mother, men sing as a ! goddess with grace clad around; Thou art thronel where another was! king: where another was queen she is crowned.

Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these.

Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas, Clothed round with the world's desire as

with raiment, and fair as the foam, And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess and mother of Rome. For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours, Her deep hair heavily laden with odor and color of flowers,

White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendor, a flame, Bent down unto us that besought her,

and earth grew sweet with her

In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun. Let my soul with their souls find place. and forget what is done and un

done.

Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath;

For these give labor and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death. Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so. For the glass of the year is brittle wherein we gaze for a span; A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.1 So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep. For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep. 1866.

With kisses glad as birds are That get sweet rain at noon; If I were what the words are And love were like the tune.

If you were life, my darling,

And I your love were death, We'd shine and snow together Ere March made sweet the weather With daffodil and starling

And hours of fruitful breath; If you were life, my darling, And I your love were death.

If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy,
We'd play for lives and seasons
With loving looks and treasons
And tears of night and morrow
And laughs of maid and boy;
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy.

If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May, We'd throw with leaves for hours And draw for days with flowers, Till day like night were shady

And night were bright like day; If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May.

If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain,
We'd hunt down love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain.

1866.

Pain for thy girdle and sorrow upon

thine head:

This is the end of every man's desire.

The burden of bright colors. Thou shalt

see

Gold tarnished, and the gray above the

green;

And as the thing thou seest thy face shall be,

And no more as the thing beforetime

seen.

And thou shalt say of mercy "It hath been,"

And living, watch the old lips and loves expire,

And talking, tears shall take thy breath between.

This is the end of every man's desire.