and

If one hypothesis you lose,
Another in its place you choose,
But, your faith gone, O man
brother,
Whose shop shall furnish you another?
One that will wash, I mean, and wear,
And wrap us warmly from despair?
While they are clearing up our puzzles,
And clapping prophylactic muzzles
On the Actæon's hounds that sniff
Our devious track through But and If,
Would they 'd explain away the Devil
And other facts that won't keep level,
But rise beneath our feet or fail,
A reeling ship's deck in a gale!
God vanished long ago, iwis,
A mere subjective synthesis;

A doll, stuffed out with hopes and fears,
Too homely for us pretty dears,
Who want one that conviction carries,
Last make of London or of Paris.
He gone, I felt a moment's spasm,
But calmed myself with Protoplasm,
A finer name, and, what is more,
As enigmatic as before;

Greek, too, and sure to fill with ease
Minds caught in the Symplegades
Of soul and sense, life's two conditions,
Each baffled with its own omniscience.
The men who labor to revise
Our Bibles will, I hope, be wise,
And print it without foolish qualms
Instead of God in David's psalms:
Noll had been more effective far
Could he have shouted at Dunbar,
"Rise, Protoplasm!" No dourert Scot
Had waited for another shot.

Our dear and admirable Huxley
Cannot explain to me why ducks lay,
Or rather, how into their eggs
Blunder potential wings and legs
With will to move them and decide
Whether in air or lymph to glide.
Who gets a hair's-breadth on by showing
That Something Else set all agoing?
Farther and farther back we push
From Moses and his burning bush;
Cry," Art Thou there?" Above, below,
All Nature mutters yes and no!
"T is the old answer: we 're agreed
Being from Being must proceed,
Life be Life's source. I might as well
Obey the meeting-house's bell.
And listen while Old Hundred pours
Forth through the summer-opened doors,
From old and young. I hear it yet,
Swelled by bass-viol and clarinet,
While the gray minister, with face
Radiant, let loose his noble bass.
If Heaven it reached not, yet its roll
Waked all the echoes of the soul,
And in it many a life found wings
To soar away from sordid things.
Church gone and singers too, the song
Sings to me voiceless all night long,
Till my soul beckons me afar,
Glowing and trembling like a star.
Will any scientific touch

With my worn strings achieve as much?

I don't object, not I, to know
My sires were monkeys, if 't was so;
I touch my ear's collusive tip
And own the poor-relationship.
That apes of various shapes and sizes
Contained their germs that all the prizes
Of senate, pulpit, camp, and bar win
May give us hopes that sweeten Darwin.
Who knows but from our loins may
spring

(Long hence) some winged sweet throated thing

As much superior to us
As we to Cynocephalus ?

This is consoling, but, alas,
It wipes no dimness from the glass
Where I am flattening my poor nose.
In hope to see beyond my toes.
Though I accept my pedigree,
Yet where, pray tell me, is the key
That should unlock a private door
To the Great Mystery, such no more?
Each offers his, but one nor all

Are much persuasive with the wall
That rises now, as long ago,
Between I wonder and I know,
Nor will vouchsafe a pin-hole peep
At the veiled Isis in its keep.
Where is no door, I but produce
My key to find it of no use.
Yet better keep it, after all,
Since Nature 's economical,

And who can tell but some fine day
(If it occur to her) she may,
In her good-will to you and me,
Make door and lock to match the key?

An officer cashiered, a civil servant (No matter though his piety were fervent) Disgracefully dismissed, and through the land

Each bore for life a stigma from the brand

Whose far-heard hiss made others more

averse

To take the facile step from bad to

worse.

Ages

could not bilk;

has a fullah

grand,

"What right

spilt the milk?

"

Perhaps when you 're older, my lad, you'll discover

The secret with which Auld Lang Syne there is gilt,Superstition of old man, maid, poet, and lover,

That cream rises thickest on milk that was spilt !

With what fumes of fame was each confident pare full!

How rates of insurance should rise on the Charles!

And which of us now would not feel wisely grateful,

Alas, think I, what worth or parts Have brought me here competing,

blems of Quarles?

E'en if won, what's the good of Life's

medals and prizes?

The rapture's in what never was or is

gone;

That we missed them makes Helens of plain Ann Elizys,

With Burns's memory beating! Himself had loved a theme like this;

Must I be its entomber?

No pen save his but 's sure to miss Its pathos or its humor.

IV.

ory's swan.

VII.

And yet who would change the old dream for new treasure?

Make not youth's sourest grapes the

best wine of our life?

Need he reckon his date by the Almanac's

measure

Who is twenty life-long in the eyes of his wife?