Oh, I see the crescent promise of my spirit O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear, hath not set. And thinner, clearer, farther going! Ancient founts of inspiration well through O, sweet and far from cliff and scar all my fancy yet.

IO

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying; Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

LXXXVIII

Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 30
Ring out the darkness of the land,

Rings Eden through the budded quicks, Ring in the Christ that is to be.

O tell me where the senses mix, O tell me where the passions meet,

That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquered years
To one that with us works, and trust,

With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.

THE EAGLE

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

From MAUD

XVIII

As when it seemed far better to be born
To labor and the mattock-hardened hand
Than nursed at ease and brought to under-
stand

I have led her home, my love, my only A sad astrology, the boundless plan

friend.

There is none like her, none.

And never yet so warmly ran my blood
And sweetly, on and on

Calming itself to the long-wished-for end, 5
Full to the banks, close on the promised
good.

None like her, none.

Just now the dry-tongued laurels' pattering talk

Seemed her light foot along the garden walk,

And shook my heart to think she comes

once more;

1Ο

But even then I heard her close the door;
The gates of Heaven are closed, and she

is gone.

There is none like her, none,

35

Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may
give

More life to Love than is or ever was
In our low world, where yet 'tis sweet to
live.

Nor will be when our summers have de- Let no one ask me how it came to pass;

ceased.

It seems that I am happy, that to me 50
A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,

In the long breeze that streams to thy A purer sapphire melts into the sea.

delicious East,

Sighing for Lebanon,

Dark cedar, though thy limbs have here increased,

Not die; but live a life of truest breath, And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs.