Poems - Household Edition | Page 8

gifts,--
But ours is not allowed.
He is no churl nor trifler,
And his viceroy is none,--
Love-without-weakness,--
Of
Genius sire and son.
And his will is not thwarted;
The seeds of land and sea
Are the
atoms of his body bright,
And his behest obey.
He serveth the servant,
The brave he loves amain;
He kills the cripple and the sick,

And straight begins again;
For gods delight in gods,
And thrust the weak aside;
To
him who scorns their charities
Their arms fly open wide.
When the old world is sterile
And the ages are effete,
He will from wrecks and
sediment
The fairer world complete.
He forbids to despair;
His cheeks mantle with
mirth;
And the unimagined good of men
Is yeaning at the birth.
Spring still makes spring in the mind
When sixty years are told;
Love wakes anew
this throbbing heart,
And we are never old;
Over the winter glaciers
I see the
summer glow,
And through the wild-piled snow-drift
The warm rosebuds below.
THE SPHINX
The Sphinx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled:
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the
world.
"Who'll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept?--
I awaited the seer

While
they slumbered and slept:--
"The fate of the man-child,
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;

Daedalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep;
Life death
overtaking;
Deep underneath deep?
"Erect as a sunbeam,
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
Undaunted and
calm;
In beautiful motion
The thrush plies his wings;
Kind leaves of his covert,

Your silence he sings.
"The waves, unashamèd,
In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
Old
playfellows meet;
The journeying atoms,
Primordial wholes,
Firmly draw, firmly
drive,
By their animate poles.
"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence.
Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,

One deity stirred,--
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still;
Night veileth the
morning,
The vapor the hill.
"The babe by its mother
Lies bathèd in joy;
Glide its hours uncounted,--
The sun is
its toy;
Shines the peace of all being,
Without cloud, in its eyes;
And the sum of the

world
In soft miniature lies.
"But man crouches and blushes,
Absconds and conceals;
He creepeth and peepeth,

He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an
accomplice,
He poisons the ground.
"Out spoke the great mother,
Beholding his fear;--
At the sound of her accents
Cold
shuddered the sphere:--
'Who has drugged my boy's cup?
Who has mixed my boy's
bread?
Who, with sadness and madness,
Has turned my child's head?'"
I heard a poet answer
Aloud and cheerfully,
'Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges
Are
pleasant songs to me.
Deep love lieth under
These pictures of time;
They fade in the
light of
Their meaning sublime.
"The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
Lit by
rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of Nature
Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees
the perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.
"To vision profounder,
Man's spirit must dive;
His aye-rolling orb
At no goal will
arrive;
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found,--for
new heavens
He spurneth the old.
"Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores;
Lurks the joy that is sweetest

In stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free?--
I would he were
nobler

Than to love me.
"Eterne alternation
Now follows, now flies;
And under pain, pleasure,--
Under
pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway;
Forth speed the
strong pulses
To the borders of day.
"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits;
Thy sight is growing blear;
Rue, myrrh and
cummin for the Sphinx,
Her muddy eyes to clear!"
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,--

Said, "Who taught thee me to name?
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow;
Of thine eye I am
eyebeam.
"Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh,
asketh;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through
thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply."
Uprose the merry Sphinx,
And crouched no more in stone;
She melted into purple
cloud,
She silvered in the moon;
She spired into a yellow flame;
She flowered in
blossoms red;
She flowed into a foaming wave:
She stood Monadnoc's head.
Thorough a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame;
"Who telleth one of my

meanings
Is master of all I am."
ALPHONSO OF CASTILE
I, Alphonso, live and learn,
Seeing Nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind;

Lemons run to leaves and rind;
Meagre crop of figs and limes;
Shorter days and
harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies.
Imps, at high
midsummer, blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot;
'Twill not now avail to tan
Orange
cheek or skin of man.
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the people cry.

Yon pale, scrawny fisher fools,
Gaunt as bitterns in the pools,
Are no brothers of
my blood;--
They discredit Adamhood.
Eyes of gods! ye must have seen,
O'er your
ramparts as ye lean,
The general debility;
Of genius the sterility;
Mighty projects
countermanded;
Rash ambition, brokenhanded;
Puny man and scentless rose

Tormenting Pan to double the dose.
Rebuild or ruin: either fill
Of vital force the
wasted rill,
Or tumble all again in heap
To weltering Chaos and to sleep.
Say, Seigniors, are the old Niles dry,
Which fed the veins of earth and sky,
That
mortals miss the loyal heats,
Which drove them erst to social feats;
Now, to a savage
selfness grown,
Think nature barely serves for one;
With science poorly mask their
hurt;
And vex the gods with question pert,
Immensely curious whether you
Still are
rulers, or Mildew?
Masters, I'm in pain with you;
Masters,