CXXVI.

AND all is well, though faith and form
Be sundered in the night of fear;
Well roars the storm to those that hear
A deeper voice across the storm,

Proclaiming social truth shall spread,

And justice, ev'n though thrice again The red fool-fury of the Seine Should pile her barricades with dead.

But ill for him that wears a crown,
And him, the lazar, in his rags :
They tremble, the sustaining crags ;
The spires of ice are toppled down,
And molten up, and roar in flood;

The fortress crashes from on high,
The brute earth lightens to the sky,
And the vast on sinks in blood,

And compassed by the fires of Hell,
While thou, dear spirit, happy star,
O'erlook'st the tumult from afar,
And smilest, knowing all is well.

CXXVII.

THE love that rose on stronger wings,
Unpalsied when he met with Death,
Is comrade of the lesser faith
That sees the course of human things.

No doubt, vast eddies in the flood

Of onward time shall yet be made, And throned races may degrade ; Yet, oh ye mysteries of good,

VOL. II.

Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear,
If all your office had to do

With old results that look like new,
If this were all your mission here,

To draw, to sheathe a useless sword,

To fool the crowd with glorious lies, To cleave a creed in sects and cries, To change the bearing of a word,

To shift an arbitrary power,

To cramp the student at his desk,
To make old bareness picturesque
And tuft with grass a feudal tower;

Why then my scorn might well descend
On you and yours. I see in part
That all, as in some piece of art,

Is toil coöperant to an end.

CXXVIII.

DEAR friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near, in woe and weal;
O, loved the most when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;

Known and unknown, human, divine!

Sweet human hand and lips and eye,
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,

Mine, mine, forever, ever mine!

Strange friend, past, present, and to be,

Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold I dream a dream of good

And mingle all the world with thee.

CXXIX.

THY voice is on the rolling air;

I hear thee where the waters run; Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair.

What art thou, then? I cannot guess;

But though I seem in star and flower
To feel thee, some diffusive power,

I do not therefore love thee less:

My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;

Though mixed with God and Nature thou,

I seem to love thee more and more.

Far off thou art, but ever nigh;

I have thee still, and I rejoice:
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee, though I die.

CXXX.

O LIVING will that shalt endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock,

Rise in the spiritual rock,

Flow through our deeds and make them pure,

That we may lift from out the dust

A voice as unto him that hears, A cry above the conquered 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.

O TRUE and tried, so well and long,
Demand not thou a marriage lay;
In that it is thy marriage day

Is music more than any song.

Nor have I felt so much of bliss

Since first he told me that he loved
A daughter of our house; nor proved
Since that dark day a day like this;

Though I since then have numbered o'er

Some thrice three years: they went and came,
Remade the blood and changed the frame,

And yet is love not less, but more;

No longer caring to embalm

In dying songs a dead regret,
But like a statue solid-set,

And moulded in colossal calm.

Regret is dead, but love is more

Than in the summers that are flown,
For I myself with these have grown
To something greater than before;

Which makes appear the songs I made
As echoes out of weaker times,
As half but idle brawling rhymes,
The sport of random sun and shade.

But where is she, the bridal flower,

That must be made a wife ere noon?

She enters, glowing like the moon

Of Eden on its bridal bower:

On me she bends her blissful eyes

And then on thee; they meet thy look, And brighten like the star that shook Betwixt the palms of paradise.

O, when her life was yet in bud,

He too foretold the perfect rose.
For thee she grew, for thee she grows
Forever, and as fair as good.

And thou art worthy; full of power;
As gentle; liberal-minded, great,
Consistent; wearing all that weight

Of learning lightly like a flower.

But now set out: the noon is near,

And I must give away the bride; She fears not, or with thee beside And me behind her, will not fear:

For I that danced her on my knee,

That watched her on her nurse's arm, That shielded all her life from harm, At last must part with her to thee;

Now waiting to be made a wife,

Her feet, my darling, on the dead;
Their pensive tablets round her head,

And the most living words of life

Breathed in her ear. The ring is on,

The “wilt thou” answered, and again The "wilt thou" asked, till out of twain Her sweet "I will" has made ye one.

Now sign your names, which shall be read
Mute symbols of a joyful morn,
By village eyes as yet unborn;
The names are signed, and overhead