That all paths to the Father lead
Where Self the feet have spurned.

And, as the mystic aisles I pace,

By aureoled workmen built, Lives ending at the Cross I trace Alike through grace and guilt; One Mary bathes the blessed feet With ointment from her eyes, With spikenard one, and both are sweet, For both are sacrifice.

Moravian hymn and Roman chant
In one devotion blend,
To speak the soul's eternal want

Of Him, the inmost friend; One prayer soars cleansed with martyr fire,

One choked with sinner's tears, In heaven both meet in one desire, And God one music hears.

Whilst thus I dream, the bells clash out Upon the Sabbath air,

Each seems a hostile faith to shout,

A selfish form of prayer; My dream is shattered, yet who knows But in that heaven so near These discords find harmonious close In God's atoning ear?

O chime of sweet Saint Charity,
Peal soon that Easter morn
When Christ for all shall risen be,
And in all hearts new-born!
That Pentecost when utterance clear
To all men shall be given,
When all shall say My Brother here,
And hear My Son in heaven!

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.

WHO hath not been a poet? Who hath not,

With life's new quiver full of winged years,

Shot at a venture, and then, following

on,

Stood doubtful at the Parting of the Ways?

There once I stood in dream, and as I paused,

Looking this way and that, came forth

to me

The figure of a woman veiled, that said, "My name is Duty, turn and follow me";

Something there was that chilled me in her voice;

I felt Youth's hand grow slack and cold in mine,

As if to be withdrawn, and I exclaimed: "O, leave the hot wild heart within my breast!

Duty comes soon enough, too soon comes Death;

This slippery globe of life whirls of itself, Hasting our youth away into the dark; These senses, quivering with electric heats,

Too soon will show, like nests on wintry boughs

Obtrusive emptiness, too palpable wreck, Which whistling north-winds line with downy snow

Sometimes, or fringe with foliaged rime, in vain,

Thither the singing birds no more re

turn."

I only felt the hand within my own, Transmuting all my blood to golden fire, Dissolving all my brain in throbbing mist.

Suddenly shrank the hand; suddenly burst

A cry that split the torpor of my brain, And as the first sharp thrust of lightning loosens

From the heaped cloud its rain, loosened

my sense:

"Save me!" it thrilled; "O, hide me! there is Death!

Death the divider, the unmerciful,
That digs his pitfalls under Love and
Youth

And covers Beauty up in the cold ground;

Horrible Death! bringer of endless dark; Let him not see me! hide me in thy breast!"

Thereat I strove to clasp her, but my

arms

Met only what slipped crumbling down, and fell,

A handful of gray ashes, at my feet.

I would have fled, I would have followed back

That pleasant path we came, but all was changed;

Rocky the way, abrupt, and hard to find; Yet I toiled on, and, toiling on, 1 thought,

"That way lies Youth, and Wisdom, and all Good;

For only by unlearning Wisdom comes And climbing backward to diviner Youth;

What the world teaches profits to the world,

What the soul teaches profits to the soul, Which then first stands erect with Godward face,

When she lets fall her pack of withered facts,

The gleanings of the outward eye and

Stood forth and beckoned, and I followed

now:

Down to no bower of roses led the path,

But through the streets of towns where chattering Cold

Hewed wood for fires whose glow was owned and fenced,

Where Nakedness wove garments of warm wool

Not for itself; — or through the fields it led

Where Hunger reaped the unattainable grain,

Where Idleness enforced saw idle lands, Leagues of unpeopled soil, the common earth,

Walled round with paper against God and Man.

"I cannot look," I groaned, "at only these ;

The heart grows hardened with perpetual wont,

And palters with a feigned necessity,
Bargaining with itself to be content;
Let me behold thy face."

The Form replied: "Men follow Duty, never overtake; Duty nor lifts her veil nor looks behind." But, as she spake, a loosened lock of hair

Slipped from beneath her hood, and I, who looked

To see it gray and thin, saw amplest gold;

Not that dull metal dug from sordid earth,

But such as the retiring sunset flood Leaves heaped on bays and capes of island cloud.

"O Guide divine," I prayed, "although not yet

I may repair the virtue which I feel Gone out at touch of untuned things and foul

With draughts of Beauty, yet declare how soon!"

"Faithless and faint of heart," the voice returned,

"Thou see'st no beauty save thou make it first;

Man, Woman, Nature, each is but a glass

Where the soul sees the image of her self,

Visible echoes, offsprings of herself.

soon,

Wait till that angel comes who opens all,

The reconciler, he who lifts the veil, The reuniter, the rest-bringer, Death."

I waited, and methought he came; but how,

Or in what shape, I doubted, for no sign,

By touch or mark, he gave me as he passed:

Only I knew a lily that I held Snapt short below the head and shrivelled up;

Then turned my Guide and looked at me unveiled,

And I beheld no face of matron stern, But that enchantment I had followed erst,

Only more fair, more clear to eye and brain,

Heightened and chastened by a household charm;

She smiled, and "Which is fairer," said

hand,

And stood upon the impoverished land, Watching the steamer down the bay.

I held the token which you gave, While slowly the smoke-pennon curled O'er the vague rim 'tween sky and wave, And shut the distance like a grave, Leaving me in the colder world.

The old worn world of hurry and heat, The young, fresh world of thought and scope,

While you, where beckoning billows fleet

Climb far sky-beaches still and sweet, Sank wavering down the ocean-slope.

You sought the new world in the old, I found the old world in the new,

All that our human hearts can hold,
The inward world of deathless mould,
The same that Father Adam knew.

He needs no ship to cross the tide,
Who, in the lives about him, sees
Fair window-prospects opening wide
O'er history's fields on every side,
To Ind and Egypt, Rome and Greece.

Whatever moulds of various brain
E er shaped the world to weal or woe,
Whatever empires' wax and wane,
To him that hath not eyes in vain,
Our village-microcosm can show.

Come back our ancient walks to tread,
Dear haunts of lost or scattered friends,
Old Harvard's scholar-factories red,
Where song and smoke and laughter
sped

The nights to proctor-haunted ends.

Constant are all our former loves, Unchanged the icehouse-girdled pond, Its hemlock glooms, its shadowy coves, Where floats the coot and never moves, Its slopes of long-tamed green beyond.

Our old familiars are not laid, Though snapt our wands and sunk our books;

They beckon, not to be gainsaid, Where, round broad meads that mowers wade,

The Charles his steel-blue sickle crooks.