Love is and was my King and Lord, And will be, tho’ as yet I keep Within his court on earth, and sleep Encompass’d by his faithful guard, And hear at times a sentinel That moves about from place to place, And whispers to the vast of space Among the worlds, that all is well. CXXV. And all is well, tho’ faith and form Be sunder’d in the night of fear; Well roars the storm to those that hear A deeper voice across the storm, Proclaiming social truth shall spread, And justice, ev’n tho’ thrice again The red fool-fury of the Seine Should pile her barricades with dead. But woe to him that wears a crown, And him, the lazar, in his rags: They tremble, the sustaining crags; The spires of ice are toppled down, And molten up, and roar in flood; The fortress crashes from on high, The brute earth lightens to the sky, And the vast Æon sinks in blood, And compass’d by the fires of Hell, While thou, dear spirit, happy star, O’erlook’st the tumult from afar, And smilest, knowing all is well. CXXVI. The love that rose on stronger wings, Unpalsied when he met with Death, Is comrade of the lesser faith That sees the course of human things. No doubt vast eddies in the flood, Of onward time shall yet be made, And throned races may degrade; Yet O ye ministers of good, Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear, If all your office had to do With old results that look like new, If this were all your mission here, To draw, to sheathe a useless sword, To fool the crowd with glorious lies, To cleave a creed in sects and cries, To change the bearing of a word, To shift an arbitrary power, To cramp the student at his desk, To make old baseness picturesque And tuft with grass a feudal tower; Why then my scorn might well descend On you and yours. I see in part That all, as in some piece of art, Is toil cöoperant to an end. CXXVII. Dear friend, far off, my lost desire, So far, so near in woe and weal; O, loved the most when most I feel There is a lower and a higher; Known and unknown, human, divine! Sweet human hand and lips and eye, Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine! Strange friend, past, present, and to be, Loved deeplier, darklier understood; Behold I dream a dream of good And mingle all the world with thee. CXXVIII. Thy voice is on the rolling air; I hear thee where the waters run; Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair.