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Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps are nearer

Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh,

Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom dearer
Than that of all his brethren, low or high;

Who to the right can feel himself the truer

For being gently patient with the wrong,
Who sees a brother in the evildoer,

And finds in Love the heart's-blood of his song;
This, this is he for whom the world is waiting
To sing the beatings of its mighty heart,
Too long hath it been patient with the grating
Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it misnamed Art.
To him the smiling soul of man shall listen,
Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside,
And once again in every eye shall glisten
The glory of a nature satisfied.

His verse shall have a great, commanding motion,
Heaving and swelling with a melody

Learnt of the sky, the river, and the ocean,

And all the pure, majestic things that be.
Awake, then, thou! we pine for thy great presence

To make us feel the soul once more sublime,

We are of far too infinite an essence

To rest contented with the lies of Time.

Speak out! and, lo! a hush of deepest wonder
Shall sink o'er all his many-voiced scene,

As when a sudden burst of rattling thunder
Shatters the blueness of a sky serene.

1841.

THE MOON.

My soul was like the sea,

Before the moon was made,

Moaning in vague immensity,

Of its own strength afraid,

Unrestful and unstaid.

Through every rift it foamed in vain,

About its earthly prison,

Seeking some unknown thing in pain,

And sinking restless back again,

For yet no moon had risen:

Its only voice a vast, dumb moan,

Of utterless anguish speaking,

It lay unhopefully alone,

And lived but in an aimless seeking.

So was my soul: but, when 't was full

Of unrest to o'erloading,

A voice of something beautiful
Whispered a dim foreboding,
And yet so soft, so sweet, so low,
It had not more of joy than woe;
And, as the sea doth oft lie still,
Making its waters meet,

As if by an unconscious will,

For the moon's silver feet,

So lay my soul within mine eyes

When thou, its guardian moon, didst rise.

And now,

howe'er its waves above

May toss and seem uneaseful,

One strong, eternal law of Love,

With guidance sure and peaceful,

As calm and natural as breath,

Moves its great deeps through life and death.

A GLANCE BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

WE see but half the causes of our deeds,
Seeking them wholly in the outer life,
And heedless of the encircling spirit-world,
Which, though unseen, is felt, and sows in us
All germs of pure and world-wide purposes.
From one stage of our being to the next
We pass unconscious o'er a slender bridge,

The momentary work of unseen hands,

Which crumbles down behind us; looking back,
We see the other shore, the gulf between,

And, marvelling how we won to where we stand,
Content ourselves to call the builder Chance.
We trace the wisdom to the apple's fall,

Not to the birth-throes of a mighty Truth

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