THE PRIEST.

They tell thee, in their dreaming school,
Of power from old dominion hurled,
When rich and poor, with juster rule,
Shall share the altered world.

Alas! since time itself began,

That fable hath but fooled the hour;

Each age that ripens power in man
But subjects man to power.

Yet every day in seven, at least,

One bright republic shall be known: Man's world awhile hath surely ceased When God proclaims His own!

Six days may rank divide the poor,
O Dives, from thy banquet-hall!

The seventh the Father opes the door,
And holds His feast for all!

EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.

THE PRIEST.

I WOULD I were an excellent divine,

That had the Bible at my fingers' ends;
That men might hear, out of this mouth of mine,
How God doth make His enemies His friends;
Rather than with a thundering and long prayer
Be led into presumption or despair.

THE PRIEST.

This would I be, and would none other be
But a religious servant of my God;
And know there is none other God but He,
And willingly to suffer mercy's rod

Joy in His grace, and live but in His love,
And seek my bliss but in the world above.

And I would frame a kind of faithful prayer
For all estates within the state of grace,
That careful love might never know despair,
Nor servile fear might faithful love deface;
And this would I both day and night devise
To make my humble spirit's exercise.

And I would read the rules of sacred life:
Persuade the troubled soul to patience;
The husband care, and comfort to the wife;
To child and servant due obedience;

Faith to the friend, and to the neighbor peace —
That love might live, and quarrels all might cease:

Prayer for the health of all that are diseased,
Confession unto all that are convicted,

And patience unto all that are displeased,
And comfort unto all that are afflicted,
And mercy unto all that have offended,
And grace to all that all may be amended.

NICHOLAS BRETON.

THE MAKING OF MAN.

BEFORE the beginning of years

There came to the making of man,

Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;

Pleasure, with pain for leaven;

Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance, fallen from heaven,

And madness, risen from hell; Strength, without hands to smite;

Love, that endures for a breath;

Night, the shadow of light,

And life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand

Fire, and the falling of tears,

And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of the years;

And froth and drift of the sea;

And dust of the laboring earth;

And bodies of things to be

In the houses of death and of birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter,

And fashioned with loathing and love,

With life before and after

And death beneath and above,

THE MAKING OF MAN.

For a day and a night and a morrow,

That his strength might endure for a span, With travail and heavy sorrow,

The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the south

They gathered as unto strife; They breathed upon his mouth,

They filled his body with life; Eyesight and speech they wrought For the veils of the soul therein,

A time for labor and thought,

A time to serve and to sin; They gave him light in his ways,

And love, and a space for delight,

And beauty, and length of days,

And night, and sleep in the night.

His speech is a burning fire;

With his lips he travaileth;

In his heart is a blind desire,

In his eyes foreknowledge of death; He weaves, and is clothed with derision; Sows, and he shall not reap;

His life is a watch or a vision

Between a sleep and a sleep.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

THERE's no dew left on the daisies and clover,

There's no rain left in heaven.

I've said my

66 • Seven times" over and over

Seven times one are seven.