Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit’s sky, But they will not remain. They light me once, they hurry by, And never come again. _SELF-DECEPTION._ Say, what blinds us, that we claim the glory Of possessing powers not our share? --Since man woke on earth, he knows his story; But, before we woke on earth, we were. Long, long since, undowered yet, our spirit Roamed, ere birth, the treasuries of God; Saw the gifts, the powers it might inherit, Asked an outfit for its earthly road. Then, as now, this tremulous, eager being Strained and longed, and grasped each gift it saw; Then, as now, a Power beyond our seeing Staved us back, and gave our choice the law. Ah! whose hand that day through heaven guided Man’s new spirit, since it was not we? Ah! who swayed our choice, and who decided What our gifts and what our wants should be? For, alas! he left us each retaining Shreds of gifts which he refused in full; Still these waste us with their hopeless straining, Still the attempt to use them proves them null. And on earth we wander, groping, reeling; Powers stir in us, stir and disappear. Ah! and he, who placed our master-feeling, Failed to place that master-feeling clear. We but dream we have our wished-for powers; Ends we seek, we never shall attain. Ah! _some_ power exists there, which is ours? _Some_ end is there, we indeed may gain? _DOVER BEACH._ The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery: we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.