O unestranged birds and bees! O face of Nature always true! O never-unsympathizing trees! O never-rejecting roof of blue, Whose rash disherison never falls On us unthinking prodigals, Yet who convictest all our ill, So grand and unappeasable! Methinks my heart from each of these Plucks part of childhood back again, Long there imprisoned, as the breeze Doth every hidden odor seize Of wood and water, hill and plain; Once more am I admitted peer In the upper house of Nature here, And feel through all my pulses run The royal blood of breeze and sun.

peace,

A willing convert of the trees.

How chanced it that so long I tost
A cable's length from this rich coast,
With foolish anchors hugging close
The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze,
Nor had the wit to wreck before
On this enchanted island's shore,
Whither the current of the sea,
With wiser drift, persuaded me?

O, might we but of such rare days
Build up the spirit's dwelling-place!
A temple of so Parian stone
Would brook a marble god alone,
The statue of a perfect life,
Far-shrined from earth's bestaining
strife.

Alas! though such felicity

In our vext world here may not be,
Yet, as sometimes the peasant's hut
Shows stones which old religion cut
With text inspired, or mystic sign
Of the Eternal and Divine,

Torn from the consecration deep
Of some fallen nunnery's mossy sleep,
So, from the ruins of this day
Crumbling in golden dust away,
The soul one gracious block may draw,
Carved with some fragment of the law,
Which, set in life's prosaic wall,
Old benedictions may recall,

And lure some nunlike thoughts to take
Their dwelling here for memory's sake.

MASACCIO.

IN THE BRANCACCI CHAPEL.

HE came to Florence long ago,
And painted here these walls, that shone
For Raphael and for Angelo,
With secrets deeper than his own,
Then shrank into the dark again,
And died, we know not how or when.

The shadows deepened, and I turned
Half sadly from the fresco grand;
"And is this," mused I, "all ye earned,
High-vaulted brain and cunning hand,
That ye to greater men could teach
The skill yourselves could never reach ?”

WRITTEN IN AID OF A CHIME OF BELLS
FOR CHRIST CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE.

GODMINSTER? Is it Fancy's play?
I know not, but the word
Sings in my heart, nor can I say
Whether 't was dreamed or heard;
Yet fragrant in my mind it clings
As blossoms after rain,

And builds of half-remembered things
This vision in my brain.

Through aisles of long-drawn centuries
My spirit walks in thought,
And to that symbol lifts its eyes
Which God's own pity wrought;
From Calvary shines the altar's gleam,
The Church's East is there,
The Ages one great minster seem,

That throbs with praise and prayer.

And all the way from Calvary down
The carven pavement shows
Their graves who won

crown

And safe in God repose;

the martyr's

The saints of many a warring creed Who now in heaven have learned

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.

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, I 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