Madras, 1881. * * * * * THOUGHT Spirit of Thought, not thine the songs that flow To fill with love or lull Idalian hours. Thou wert not nurtured ’mid the marish flowers, Or where the nightshade blooms, or lilies blow: But on the mountains. From those keeps of snow Thou seëst the heavens, and earth, and marts and towers Of teeming man; the battle smoke that lours Above the nations where they strive below;— The gleam of golden cohorts and the cloud Of shrieking peoples yielding to the brink— The gleam, the gold, the agony, the rage; The civic virtue of a race unbow’d; The reeling empire, lost in license, sink; And chattering pigmies of a later age. 1881-2. * * * * * SCIENCE I would rejoice in iron arms with those Who, nobly in the scorn of recompense, Have dared to follow Truth alone, and thence To teach the truth—nor fear’d the rage that rose. No high-piled monuments are theirs who chose Her great inglorious toil—no flaming death; To them was sweet the poetry of prose, But wisdom gave a fragrance to their breath. Alas! we sleep and snore beyond the night, Tho’ these great men the dreamless daylight show; But they endure—the Sons of simple Light— And, with no lying lanthorne’s antic glow, Reveal the open way that we must go. 1881-2. * * * * * POWER Caligula, pacing thro’ his pillar’d hall, Ere yet the last dull glimmer of his mind Had faded in the banquet, where reclined He spent all day in drunken festival, Made impious pretence that Jove with him, Unseen, walk’d, talk’d and jested; for he spoke To nothing by his side; or frown’d; or broke In answering smiles; or shook a playful rim Of raiment coyly. ‘Earth,’ he said, ‘is mine— No vapour. Yet Caligula, brother Jove, Will love thee if he find thee worthy love; If not, his solid powers shall war with thine And break them, God of Cloud.’ The courtiers round, As in the presence of two deities, bent In servile scorn: when, like a warning sent, An utterance of earthquake shook the ground, Awful, but which no human meaning bore. With glaring eyeballs narrowing in dismay, The huddled creature fallen foaming lay, Glass’d in the liquid marbles of the floor. 1881-2. * * * * * DOGMA To a poor martyr perisht in the flame Lo suddenly the cool and calm of Heaven, And One who gently touch’d and tended, came. ‘For thee, O Lord,’ he cried, ‘my life was given.’