visions, die amid my tears,
For hence, nor cheered, nor blinded, must I seek
That larger dream that cannot fade; though years
Of leaden days and leagues of by-path bleak
Must intervene, with austere sadness gray,
Fade dimmer! lest in agony I turn,
And heartsick seek ye, though the Fates shriek "Nay!"
And the wroth heavens with judgment lightnings burn.

Go useless lesser dreams. And where they were,
Rise, grave aërial Good! Thy texture's true.
There is no good can die. "No ill," says Time, "can bear,
However beautiful, my long, long earnest view."

SEARCHINGS.

(EARLY LINES.)

Soul, thou hast lived before. Thy wing
  Hath swept the ancient folds of light
Which once wrapt stilly everything,
  Before the advent of a Night.

O thou art blind and thou art dead
  Unto the knowledge that was thine.
A longing and a dreamy dread
  Alone oft shadow the divine.

Full loud calls past eternity,
  But Lethe's murmur stills its roar,
The one vague truth that reaches thee
  Is this—that thou hast lived before.

Home often comes some voice of eld
  Confused and low—a broken surge
By fate and distance half withheld—
  Rich in linked sadness like a dirge.

The muffled, great bell Silence clangs
  His solemn call, and thou, O soul!
Dost stir in sense's torpid fangs,
  Like the blind magnet, toward a pole.

The deep, vast, swelling organ-sound;
  The cadence of an evening flute,
Bring oft those ancient joys around
  To linger till the notes are mute.

And when thy hushéd breathing fills
  The shrine of quiet reverence,
Then, too, a freeing angel stills
  The clanking of the chains of sense.

But nearest to that former life
  Another power calleth thee,
Away from care, away from strife,
  Toward what thou wast—infinity.

And in thee, soul, the deepest chord
  Thrills to a strain rung from above;
That strain is bound within a word,
  A sole, sweet word, and it is—Love.

Love—yet it cannot set thee free
  To sweep again those folds of light,
It torches but a part to thee
  And dim, though fair. The rest is night.

As the fine structure of a man
  Fits into life's great world, foremade,
So too it shadoweth the plan
  Of ages hidden in the shade.

And thou hast lived before; hast known
  The depth of every mystery,
Has dwelt in Nature, hid, alone
  And winged the blue ætherial sea;

Hast looked upon the ends of space;
  Hast visited each rolling star,—
Before Time measured forth his pace,
  Scythe-armed, on a terrestrial war.

HOMER.

(EARLY LINES.)

Time, with his constant touch, has half erased
The memory, but he cannot dim the fame
  Of one who best of all has paraphrased
The tale of waters with a tale of flame,
Yet left us but his accents and his name.

Upon that life, the sun of history
Shines not, but Legend, like a moon in mist,
  Sheds over it a weird uncertainty,
In which all figures wave and actions twist,
So that a man may read them as he list.

We know not if he trod some Theban street,
And sought compassion on his aged woe,
  We know not if on Chian sand his feet
Left footprints once; but only this we know,
How the high ways of fame those footprints show.

Along the border of the restless sea,
The lonely thinker must have loved to roam,
  We feel his soul wrapt in its majesty,
And he can speak in words that drip with foam,
As though himself a deep, and depths his home.

Hark! under all and through and over all,
Runs on the cadence of the changeful sea;
  Now pleasantly the graceful surges fall,
And now they mutter in an angry key
Ever, throughout their changes, grand and free.

How sternly sang he of Achilles' might,
How sweetly of the sweet Andromache,
  How low his lyre when Ajax prays for light;
(Well might he bend that lyre in sympathy
For also great, and also blind was he.)

We almost see the nod of sternbrowed Jove,
And feel Olympus shake; we almost hear
  The melodies that Greek youths interwove
In pæan to Apollo, and the clear,
Full voice of Nestor, sounding far and near.

A dignity of sadness filled his heart,
That sadness, born of immortality,
  Which they alone who live in art
Feel in its sweetness and its mystery,
Half-filled already with infinity.

Yea, Zeus was wise when he decreed him blind,
And wiser still when he decreed him poor;
  For insight grew as outer sight declined,
And want overrode the ills it could not cure,
Else rhapsody had lacked its lay most pure.

OUR UNDERLYING EXISTENCE.

O Fool, that wisdom dost despise,
  Thou knowest not, thou canst not guess
Another part of thee is wise
  And silent sees thy foolishness.

Yet, fool, how dare I pity thee
  Because my heart reveres the sages;
The fool lies also deep in me;
  We all are one beneath the ages.

TO ______.

"Creation—God's kind giving—
  Continues: did not at one Adam end.
New realms start open to each generation,
  Each man receives some gift, some revelation:
I, in this late age living,
  The gift, the new-creation of a friend.

TO A DEBUTANTE.

Thou who smilest in thy freshness,
  Bright as bud in morning dew;
Keep this thought in thy heart's bower
"Ever turn, like sunward flower,
  To the Good, the Fair, the True."

A PROBLEM.

Once, in the University of Life,
Remember and Inquire, my old Professors,
A question hard requested me to solve:
"How can man's love be great and be eternal
If Right forewarns he may be called to leave it:
Whether should Love rule Duty and be all,
Or Duty turn his back on sweet Love crying?"

I paused—then spoke, not having what to answer:
"Ye know, Professors, how to utter problems
And man perplex with his own elements.
Yet I believe the ways ye teach are perfect
And able are you what ye set to solve.—
Admiring you, however, aids me nothing,
I speak because I have not what to answer."
"Ponder," they said, those quiet, sage Professors,

I had seen Love—O Vision, I was near thee
When Death refused that I should speak with thee!
And I had seen her soft eyes' trustful brightness
Wondrous look down into the soul of many
And lead it out and make it of eternity.
Yes, truly, in her look men find true being!—
What ruin if such being must be withered!

I had seen Duty—soldier of his God—
Of Virtue and of Order sentinel—
Grand his firm countenance with obedience.
His troth to Love would