angelical,
         And say,—
   “See, far away

“Lies one I saw on earth;
One stricken from his birth
         With curse
   Of destinate verse.

“What place doth He ye serve
For such sad spirit reserve,—
         Given,
   In dark lieu of Heaven,

“The impitiable Dæmon,
Beauty, to adore and dream on,
         To be
   Perpetually

“Hers, but she never his?
He reapeth miseries,
         Foreknows
   His wages woes;

“He lives detachèd days;
He serveth not for praise;
         For gold
   He is not sold;

“Deaf is he to world’s tongue;
He scorneth for his song
         The loud
   Shouts of the crowd;

“He asketh not world’s eyes;
Not to world’s ears he cries;
         Saith,—‘These
   Shut, if ye please;’

“He measureth world’s pleasure,
World’s ease as Saints might measure;
         For hire
   Just love entire

“He asks, not grudging pain;
And knows his asking vain,
         And cries—
   ‘Love! Love!’ and dies;

“In guerdon of long duty,
Unowned by Love or Beauty;
         And goes—
   Tell, tell, who knows!

“Aliens from Heaven’s worth,
Fine beasts who nose i’ the earth,
         Do there
   Reward prepare.

“But are his great desires
Food but for nether fires?
         Ah me,
   A mystery!

“Can it be his alone,
To find when all is known,
         That what
   He solely sought

“Is lost, and thereto lost
All that its seeking cost?
         That he
   Must finally,

“Through sacrificial tears,
And anchoretic years,
         Tryst
   With the sensualist?”

So ask; and if they tell
The secret terrible,
         Good friend,
   I pray thee send

Some high gold embassage
To teach my unripe age.
         Tell!
   Lest my feet walk hell.

A FALLEN YEW.

It seemed corrival of the world’s great prime,
   Made to un-edge the scythe of Time,
      And last with stateliest rhyme.

No tender Dryad ever did indue
   That rigid chiton of rough yew,
      To fret her white flesh through:

But some god like to those grim Asgard lords,
   Who walk the fables of the hordes
      From Scandinavian fjords,

Upheaved its stubborn girth, and raised unriven,
   Against the whirl-blast and the levin,
      Defiant arms to Heaven.

When doom puffed out the stars, we might have said,
   It would decline its heavy head,
      And see the world to bed.

For this firm yew did from the vassal leas,
   And rain and air, its tributaries,
      Its revenues increase,

And levy impost on the golden sun,
   Take the blind years as they might run,
      And no fate seek or shun.

But now our yew is strook, is fallen—yea
   Hacked like dull wood of every day
      To this and that, men say.

Never!—To Hades’ shadowy shipyards gone,
   Dim barge of Dis, down Acheron
      It drops, or Lethe wan.

Stirred by its fall—poor destined bark of Dis!—
   Along my soul a bruit there is
      Of echoing images,

Reverberations of mortality:
   Spelt backward from its death, to me
      Its life reads saddenedly.

Its breast was hollowed as the tooth of eld;
   And boys, their creeping unbeheld,
      A laughing moment dwelled.

Yet they, within its very heart so crept,
   Reached not the heart that courage kept
      With winds and years beswept.

And in its boughs did close and kindly nest
   The birds, as they within its breast,
      By all its leaves caressed.

But bird nor child might touch by any art
   Each other’s or the tree’s hid heart,
      A whole God’s breadth apart;

The breadth of God, he breadth of death and life!
   Even so, even so, in undreamed strife
      With pulseless Law, the wife,—

The sweetest wife on sweetest marriage-day,—
   Their souls at grapple in mid-way,
      Sweet to her sweet may say:

“I take you to my inmost heart, my true!”
   Ah, fool! but there is one heart you
      Shall never take him to!

The hold that falls not when the town is got,
   The heart’s heart, whose immurèd plot
      Hath keys yourself keep not!

Its ports you cannot burst—you are withstood—
   For him that to your listening blood
      Sends precepts as he would.

Its gates are deaf to Love, high summoner;
   Yea, Love’s great warrant runs not there:
      You are your prisoner.

Yourself are with yourself the sole consortress
   In that unleaguerable fortress;
      It knows you not for portress

Its keys are at the cincture hung of God;
   Its gates are trepidant to His nod;
      By Him its floors are trod.

And if His feet shall rock those floors in wrath,
   Or blest aspersion sleek His path,
      Is only choice it hath.

Yea, in that ultimate heart’s occult abode
   To lie as in an oubliette of God,
      Or as a bower untrod,

Built by a secret Lover for His Spouse;—
   Sole choice is this your life allows,
      Sad tree, whose perishing boughs
         So few birds house!

DREAM-TRYST.

The breaths of kissing night and day
   Were mingled in the eastern Heaven:
Throbbing with unheard melody
   Shook Lyra all its star-chord seven:
      When dusk shrunk cold, and light trod shy,
         And dawn’s grey eyes were troubled grey;
      And souls went palely up the sky,
         And mine to Lucidé.

There was no change in her sweet eyes
   Since last I saw those sweet eyes shine;
There was no change in her deep heart
   Since last that deep heart knocked at mine.
      Her eyes were clear, her eyes were Hope’s,
         Wherein did ever come and go
      The sparkle of the