sky

To the leaf's rustle, and the cricket's cry. Then, like that basket, flush with summer fruit,

Dropped by the angels at the Prophet's foot,

| Came, unannounced, a gift of clustered sweetness,

Full-orbed, and glowing with the prisoned beams

Of summery suns, and rounded to completeness

By kisses of the south-wind and the dew.

Thrilled with a glad surprise, methought I knew

The pleasure of the homeward-turning Jew,

When Eschol's clusters on his shoulders lay,

Dropping their sweetness on his desert

A single vine-slip as she passed the gate, Where the dread sword alternate paled and burned,

And the stern angel, pitying her fate, Forgave the lovely trespasser, and turned Aside his face of fire; and thus the waste And fallen world hath yet its annual

taste

Of primal good, to prove of sin the cost, And show by one gleaned ear the mighty harvest lost.

A MEMORY.

HERE, while the loom of Winter weaves
The shroud of flowers and fountains,
I think of thee and summer eves

Among the Northern mountains.

When thunder tolled the twilight's close, And winds the lake were rude on, And thou wert singing, Ca' the Yowes, The bonny yowes of Cluden!

When, close and closer, hushing breath,

Our circle narrowed round thee, And smiles and tears made up the wreath Wherewith our silence crowned thee;

And, strangers all, we felt the ties

Of sisters and of brothers;
Ah! whose of all those kindly eyes
Now smile upon another's?

The sport of Time, who still apart
The waifs of life is flinging;
O, nevermore shall heart to heart
Draw nearer for that singing!

Yet when the panes are frosty-starred,
And twilight's fire is gleaming,
I hear the songs of Scotland's bard
Sound softly through my dreaming!

A song that lends to winter snows
The glow of summer weather,
Again I hear thee ca' the yowes
To Cluden's hills of heather!

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My voice hath mingled with the exultant cheer

Borne upon all our Northern winds along;

If I have failed to join the fickle throng In wide-eyed wonder, that thou standest strong

In victory, surprised in thee to find Brougham's scathing power with Canning's grace combined;

That he, for whom the ninefold Muses

sang,

From their twined arms a giant athlete sprang,

Barbing the arrows of his native tongue With the spent shafts Latona's archer flung,

To smite the Python of our land and time,

Fell as the monster born of Crissa's slime, Like the blind bard who in Castalian springs

Tempered the steel that clove the crest of kings,

And on the shrine of England's freedom laid

The gifts of Cuma and of Delphi's

Small need hast thou of words of praise shade, from me.

Thou knowest my heart, dear friend, and well canst guess

That, even though silent, I have not the less

Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree With the large future which I shaped for thee,

When, years ago, beside the summer sea, White in the noon, we saw the long waves fall

Baffled and broken from the rocky wall, That, to the menace of the brawling flood, Opposed alone its massive quietude, Calm as a fate; with not a leaf nor vine

Nor birch-spray trembling in the still moonshine, Crowning it like God's peace. I sometimes think

That night-scene by the sea prophetical,

(For Nature speaks in symbols and in signs,

And through her pictures human fate divines),

That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows sink

of one

Look across these shining sands,
Through the furnace of the noon,
Through the white light of the moon.
Strong the Ghiblee wind is blowing,
Strange and large the world is growing!
Speak and tell us where we are going,
Where are we going, Rubee?

Bornou land was rich and good,
Wells of water, fields of food,
Dourra fields, and bloom of bean,
And the palm-tree cool and green :
Bornou land we see no longer,
Here we thirst and here we hunger,
Here the Moor-man smites in anger :
Where are we going, Rubee?

When we went from Bornou land,
We were like the leaves and sand,
We were many, we are few;
Life has one, and death has two :
Whitened bones our path are showing,
Thou All-seeing, thou All-knowing!
Hear us, tell us, where are we going,
Where are we going, Rubee?

Moons of marches from our eyes
Bornou land behind us lies;
Stranger round us day by day
Bends the desert circle gray;
Wild the waves of sand are flowing,
Hot the winds above them blowing,
Lord of all things! - where are we go-
ing?

Where are we going, Rubee?

We are weak, but Thou art strong; Short our lives, but Thine is long; We are blind, but Thou hast eyes;

Men creep, Not walk; with blood too pale and

tame

To pay the debt they owe to shame ; Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep

Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want;
Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep
Six days to Mammon, one to Cant.

In such a time, give thanks to God,
That somewhat of the holy rage
With which the prophets in their
age

On all its decent seemings trod,

Has set your feet upon the lie,
That man and ox and soul and clod
Are market stock to sell and buy!

The hot words from your lips, my own,
To caution trained, might not repeat;
But if some tares among the wheat
Of generous thought and deed were

The brave old strife the fathers saw
For Freedom calls for men again
Like those who battled not in vain
For England's Charter, Alfred's law;
And right of speech and trial just
Wage in your name their ancient war
With venal courts and perjured trust.

God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late,
They touch the shining hills of day;
The evil cannot brook delay,
The good can well afford to wait.
Give ermined knaves their hour of
crime;

Ye have the future grand and great,
The safe appeal of Truth to Time !

THE NEW EXODUS.64

By fire and cloud, across the desert sand,

And through the parted waves, From their long bondage, with an outstretched hand,

God led the Hebrew slaves !

Dead as the letter of the Pentateuch,
As Egypt's statues cold,

In the adytum of the sacred book
Now stands that marvel old.

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O fools and blind! Above the Pyramids
Stretches once more that hand,
And tranced Egypt, from her stony lids,
Flings back her veil of sand.

And morning-smitten Memnon, singing, wakes;

And, listening by his Nile, O'er Ammon's grave and awful visage breaks

A sweet and human smile.

Not, as before, with hail and fire, and call

Of death for midnight graves, But in the stillness of the noonday, fall

The fetters of the slaves.

No longer through the Red Sea, as of old,

The bondmen walk dry shod; Through human hearts, by love of Him controlled,

Runs now that path of God!

THE HASCHISH.

OF all that Orient lands can vaunt
Of marvels with our own competing,
The strangest is the Haschish plant,

And what will follow on its eating.

What pictures to the taster rise,

Of Dervish or of Almeh dances! Of Eblis, or of Paradise,

Set all aglow with Houri glances !

The poppy visions of Cathay,

The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian; The wizard lights and demon play Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian!