That mask'd thee from men's reverence up, and forced Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood: now,

Giv'n back to life, to life indeed, thro' thee, [light Indeed I love: the new day comes, the Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults

Lived over: lift thine eyes; my doubts are dead,

My haunting sense of hollow shows: the change,

This truthful change in thee has kill'd it. Dear,

Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine,

Like yonder morning on the blind halfworld;

Approach and fear not; breathe upon my brows;

In that fine air I tremble, all the past Melts mist-like into this bright hour,

My wife, my life. O we will walk this world,

Yoked in all exercise of noble end. And so thro' those dark gates across the wild

That no man knows. Indeed I love thee: come,

Yield thyself up: my hopes and thine

are one:

Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;

Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust

to me."

CONCLUSION.

So closed our tale, of which I give you

all

The random scheme as wildly as it

rose:

Yet how to bind the scatter'd scheme of seven

Together in one sheaf? What style could suit?

The men required that I should give throughout

The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque, With which we banter'd little Lilia first:

The women-and perhaps they felt their power,

For something in the ballads which they sang,

Or in their silent influence as they sat, Had ever seem'd to wrestle with burlesque,

And drove us, last, to quite a solemn

close

They hated banter, wish'd for something real,

A gallant fight, a noble princess-why

Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France.

"Look there, a garden!" said my

college friend,

The Tory member's elder son, "and there!

God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off,

And keeps our Britain, whole within herself,

A nation yet, the rulers and the ruledSome sense of duty, something of a faith,

Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,

Some patient force to change them when we will,

Some civic manhood firm against the

The long line of the approaching rookery swerve

From the elms, and shook the branches

of the deer

From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang

Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout

More joyful than the city-roar that hails

Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs

Give up their parks some dozen times a year

To let the people breathe? So thrice they cried,

I likewise, and in groups they stream'd away.

But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on,

So much the gathering darkness charm'd we sat

But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, Perchance upon the futɩ re man: the walls

Blacken'd about us, bats wheel'd, and owls whoop'd,

And gradually the powers of the night, That range above the region of the

wind,

Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up

Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds, Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens.

Last little Lilia, rising quietly Disrobed the glimmering statue of Six Ralph

From those rich silks, and home wellpleased we went.

By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him: thou art just. Thou seemest human and divine,

The highest, holiest manhood, thou: Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;

For knowledge is of things we see ; And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight; We mock thee when we do not fear: But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem'd my sin in me; What seem'd my worth since I began;

For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Thy creature, whom I found so fair I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved.