class="poetry">I dreamt (no “dream” awake—a dream indeed)
A wrathful man was talking in the park:
“Where are the Higher Powers, who know our need
         And leave us in the dark?

“There are no Higher Powers; there is no heart
In God, no love”—his oratory here,
Taking the paupers’ and the cripples’ part,
         Was broken by a tear.

And then it seemed that One who did create
Compassion, who alone invented pity,
Walked, as though called, in at that north-east gate,
         Out from the muttering city;

Threaded the little crowd, trod the brown grass,
Bent o’er the speaker close, saw the tear rise,
And saw Himself, as one looks in a glass,
         In those impassioned eyes.

THE DIVINE PRIVILEGE

Lord, where are Thy prerogatives?
   Why, men have more than Thou hast kept;
The king rewards, remits, forgives,
   The poet to a throne has stept.

And Thou, despoiled, hast given away
   Worship to men, success to strife,
Thy glory to the heavenly day,
   And made Thy sun the lord of life.

Is one too precious to impart,
   One property reserved to Christ?
One, cherished, grappled to that heart?
   —To be alone the Sacrificed?

O Thou who lovest to redeem,
   One whom I know lies sore oppressed.
Thou wilt not suffer me to dream
   That I can bargain for her rest.

Seven hours I swiftly sleep, while she
   Measures the leagues of dark, awake.
O that my dewy eyes might be
   Parched by a vigil for her sake!

But O rejected!  O in vain!
   I cannot give who would not keep.
I cannot buy, I cannot gain,
   I cannot give her half my sleep.

FREE WILL

Dear are some hidden things
   My soul has sealed in silence; past delights,
Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings,
   Remembered in the nights.

But my best treasures are
   Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold;
Yet O! profounder hoards oracular
   No reliquaries hold.

There lie my trespasses,
   Abjured but not disowned.  I’ll not accuse
Determinism, nor, as the Master [26] says,
   Charge even “the poor Deuce.”

Under my hand they lie,
   My very own, my proved iniquities,
And though the glory of my life go by
   I hold and garner these.

How else, how otherwhere.
   How otherwise, shall I discern and grope
For lowliness?  How hate, how love, how dare,
   How weep, how hope?

THE TWO QUESTIONS

      “A riddling world!” one cried.
“If pangs must be, would God that they were sent
To the impure, the cruel, and passed aside
      The holy innocent!”

      But I, “Ah no, no, no!
Not the clean heart transpierced; not tears that fall
For a child’s agony; not a martyr’s woe;
      Not these, not these appal.

      “Not docile motherhood,
Dutiful, frequent, closed in all distress;
Not