SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM, ADES.

O, WANDERING dim on the extremest edge
Of God's bright providence, whose spirits sigh
Drearily in you, like the winter sedge

That shivers o'er the dead pool stiff and dry,
A thin, sad voice, when the bold wind roars by
From the clear North of Duty,—

Still by cracked arch and broken shaft I trace
That here was once a shrine and holy place
Of the supernal Beauty,—

A child's play-altar reared of stones and moss, With wilted flowers for offering laid across, Mute recognition of the all-ruling Grace.

How far are ye from the innocent, from those
Whose hearts are as a little lane serene,
Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with unbroke

snows,

Or in the summer blithe with lamb-cropped green,

Save the one track, where naught more rude is

seen

Than the plump wain at even

Bringing home four months' sunshine bound in sheaves !

How far are ye from those! yet who believes
That ye can shut out heaven?

Your souls partake its influence, not in vain
Nor all unconscious, as that silent lane
Its drift of noiseless apple-blooms receives.

Looking within myself, I note how thin

A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate,
Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin ;—
In my own heart I find the worst man's mate,
And see not dimly the smooth-hinged gate
That opes to those abysses

Where ye grope darkly,-ye who never knew
On your young hearts love's consecrating dew,
Or felt a mother's kisses,

Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled ; Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue!

One band ye cannot break,—the force that clips
And grasps your circles to the central light;
Yours is the prodigal comet's long ellipse,
Self-exiled to the farthest verge of night;
Yet strives with you no less that inward might
No sin hath e'er imbruted;

The god in you the creed-dimmed eye eludes;
The Law brooks not to have its solitudes

By bigot feet polluted ;

Yet they who watch your God-compelled return May see your happy perihelion burn

Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods.

TO THE PAST.

WONDROUS and awful are thy silent halls,
O kingdom of the past!
There lie the bygone ages in their palls,
Guarded by shadows vast,

There all is hushed and breathless,
Save when some image of old error falls
Earth worshipped once as deathless.

There sits drear Egypt, 'mid beleaguering sands, Half woman and half beast,

The burnt-out torch within her mouldering

hands

That once lit all the East; A dotard bleared and hoary,

There Asser crouches o'er the blackened brands
Of Asia's long-quenched glory.

Still as a city buried 'neath the sea,
Thy courts and temples stand;
Idle as forms on wind-waved tapestry
Of saints and heroes grand,
Thy phantasms grope and shiver,
Or watch the loose shores crumbling silently
Into Time's gnawing river.

Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun,
Of their old godhead lorn,

Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun,
Which they misdeem for morn;

And yet the eternal sorrow

In their unmonarched eyes says day is done
Without the hope of morrow.

O realm of silence and of swart eclipse,
The shapes that haunt thy gloom

Make signs to us and move their withered lips
Across the gulf of doom;

Yet all their sound and motion

Bring no more freight to us than wraiths of ships
On the mirage's ocean.

And if sometimes a moaning wandereth
From out thy desolate halls,

If some grim shadow of thy living death
Across our sunshine falls

And scares the world to error,

The eternal life sends forth melodious breath
To chase the misty terror.

Thy mighty clamors, wars, and world-noised deeds
Are silent now in dust,

Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds
Beneath some sudden gust;

Thy forms and creeds have vanished,
Tossed out to wither like unsightly weeds
From the world's garden banished.

Whatever of true life there was in thee
Leaps in our age's veins ;

Wield still thy bent and wrinkled empery,
And shake thine idle chains;-

To thee thy dross is clinging,

For us thy martyrs die, thy prophets see,
Thy poets still are singing.

Here, 'mid the bleak waves of our strife and care,
Float the green Fortunate Isles

Where all thy hero-spirits dwell, and share
Our martyrdoms and toils;
The present moves attended

With all of brave and excellent and fair
That made the old time splendid.