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As if to be withdrawn, and I replied: "O, leave the hot wild heart within my breast!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, Thither the singing birds no more rein vain, turn."

Then glowed to me a maiden from the left,

With bosom half disclosed, and naked

arms

More white and undulant than necks of

swans;

And all before her steps an influence ran Warm as the whispering South that opens buds

And swells the laggard sails of Northern May.

"I am called Pleasure, come with me!" she said,

Then laughed, and shook out sunshine from her hair,

Not only that, but, so it seemed, shook out

All memory too, and all the moonlit past,

Old loves, old aspirations, and old dreams,

More beautiful for being old and gone.

So we two went together; downward sloped

The path through yellow meads, or so I dreamed,

Yellow with sunshine and young green, but I

Saw naught nor heard, shut up in one close joy;

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 perpet

ual wont,

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 her eyes,

"The hag's unreal Florimel or mine?"

ALADDIN.

WHEN I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,

But I had Aladdin's lamp; When I could not sleep for cold,

I had fire enough in my brain, And builded, with roofs of gold,

My beautiful castles in Spain !

Since then I have toiled day and night, I have money and power good store, But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright,

For the one that is mine no more; Take, Fortune, whatever you choose, You gave, and may snatch again; I have nothing't would pain me to lose, For I own no more castles in Spain !

AN INVITATION.

NINE years have slipt like hour-glass sand

From life's still-emptying globe away,

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