"As well as if thy voice to-day
Were praising God, the Pope's great way.

"This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome
Praises God from Peter's dome."

Said Theocrite, "Would God that I
Might praise Him, that great way, and die!"

Night passed, day shone,

And Theocrite was gone.

With God a day endures alway,
A thousand years are but a day.

God said in Heaven, "Nor day nor night
Now brings the voice of my delight."

Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth,
Spread his wings and sank to carth;

Entered in flesh, the empty cell,

Lived there, and played the craftsman well:

And morning, evening, noon, and night,
Praised God in place of Theocrite.

And from a boy, to youth he grew:
The man put off the stripling's hue:

The man matured and fell away
Into the season of decay:

And ever o'er the trade he bent,
And ever lived on earth content.

(He did God's will; to him, all one
If on the earth or in the sun.)

God said, "A praise is in mine ear;
There is no doubt in it, no fear:

THE BOY AND THE ANGEL.

"So sing old worlds, and so

New worlds that from my footstool go.

"Clearer loves sound other ways:
I miss my little human praise."

Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell
The flesh disguise, remained the cell.

'T was Easter Day: he flew to Rome,
And paused above Saint Peter's dome.

In the tiring-room close by
The great outer gallery,

With his holy vestments dight,
Stood the new Pope, Theocrite

And all his past career
Came back upon him clear,

Since when, a boy, he plied his trade,
Till on his life the sickness weighed;

And in his cell, when death drew near,
An angel in a dream brought cheer;

And rising from the sickness drear
He grew a priest, and now stood here.

To the East with praise he turned,
And on his sight the angel burned.

"I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell, And set thee here; I did not well.

Vainly I left my angel's-sphere,

Vain was thy dream of many a year.

66

Thy voice's praise seemed weak; it dropped, Creation's chorus stopped!

45

"Go back and praise again

The early way,— while I remain.

"With that weak voice of our disdain,
Take up Creation's pausing strain.

"Back to the cell and poor employ:
Become the craftsman and the boy!"

Theocrite grew old at home;

A new Pope dwelt in Peter's Dome.

One vanished as the other died:
They sought God side by side.

I

TIME'S REVENGES.

'VE a Friend, over the sea;

I like him, but he loves me;

It all grew out of the books I write;
They find such favor in his sight
That he slaughters you with savage looks
Because you don't admire my books:

He does himself though, - and if some vein
Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain,
To-morrow month, if I lived to try,
Round should I just turn quietly,

Or out of the bedclothes stretch my hand
Till I found him, come from his foreign land

To be my nurse in this poor place,

And make me broth and wash my face,

And light my fire, and, all the while,
Bear with his old good-humored smile
That I told him, "Better have kept away

TIME'S REVENGES.

Than come and kill me, night and day,
With worse than fever's throbs and shoots,
At the creaking of his clumsy boots."

I am as sure that this he would do,
As that St. Paul's is striking Two:
And I think I had rather... woe is me
Yes, rather see him than not see,
If lifting a hand would seat him there
Before me in the empty chair
To-night, when my head aches indeed,
And I can neither think, nor read,
And these blue fingers will not hold
The pen; this garret 's freezing cold!

And I've a Lady - There he wakes,
The laughing fiend and prince of snakes
Within me, at her name, to pray
Fate send some creature in the way
Of my love for her, to be down-torn,
Upthrust and onward borne

So I might prove myself that sea
Of passion which I needs must be!

Call my thoughts false and my fancies quaint,
And my style infirm, and its figures faint,
All the critics say, and more blame yet,

And not one angry word you get!

But, please you, wonder I would put
My cheek beneath that Lady's foot
Rather than trample under mine
The laurels of the Florentine,

And you shall see how the Devil spends

A fire God gave for other ends!

I tell you, I stride up and down

This garret, crowned with love's best crown,

And feasted with love's perfect feast,

To think I kill for her, at least,

Body and soul and peace and fame,

Alike youth's end and manhood's aim,

So is my spirit, as flesh with sin,

47

Filled full, eaten out and in

With the face of her, the eyes of her,
The lips and little chin, the stir

Of shadow round her mouth; and she
-I'll tell you
- calmly would decree
That I should roast at a slow fire,
If that would compass her desire
And make her one whom they invite
To the famous ball to-morrow night.

There may be Heaven; there must be Hell;
Meantime, there is our Earth here, well!

"H

THE GLOVE.

EIGH-HO!" yawned one day King Francis,
"" Distance all value enhances !

When a man's busy, why, leisure
Strikes him as wonderful pleasure.
'Faith, and at leisure once is he?
Straightway he wants to be busy.
Here we 've got peace; and aghast I'm
Caught thinking war the true pastime !
Is there a reason in metre?

Give us your speech, master Peter!"
I who, if mortal dare say so,
Ne'er am at loss with my Naso,

"Sire," I replied, "joys prove cloudlets :
Men are the merest Ixions,"

Here the King whistled aloud, "Let's
Heigh-ho go look at our lions!"
Such are the sorrowful chances

...

If you talk fine to King Francis.