What is it then to me If others are inquisitive to see? Why should I quit my place to go and ask If other men are working at their task? Leave my own buried roots to go And see that brother plants shall grow; And turn away from Thee, O Thou most Holy Light, To look if other orbs their orbits keep aright, Around their proper sun, Deserting Thee, and being undone. O let me love my love unto myself alone, And know my knowledge to the world unknown; And worship Thee, O hid One, O much sought, As but man can or ought, Within the abstracted’st shrine of my least breathed on thought. Better it were, thou sayest, to consent; Feast while we may, and live ere life be spent; Close up clear eyes, and call the unstable sure, The unlovely lovely, and the filthy pure; In self-belyings, self-deceivings roll, And lose in Action, Passion, Talk, the soul. Nay, better far to mark off thus much air, And call it Heaven: place bliss and glory there; Fix perfect homes in the unsubstantial sky, And say, what is not, will be by-and-bye. _SHADOW AND LIGHT._ Cease, empty Faith, the Spectrum saith, I was, and lo, have been; I, God, am nought: a shade of thought, Which, but by darkness seen, Upon the unknown yourselves have thrown, Placed it and light between. At morning’s birth on darkened earth, And as the evening sinks, Awfully vast abroad is cast The lengthened form that shrinks And shuns the sight in midday light, And underneath you slinks. From barren strands of wintry lands Across the seas of time, Borne onward fast ye touch at last An equatorial clime; In equatorial noon sublime At zenith stands the sun, And lo, around, far, near, are found Yourselves, and Shadow none. A moment! yea! but when the day At length was perfect day! A moment! so! and light we know With dark exchanges aye, Nor morn nor eve shall shadow leave Your sunny paths secure, And in your sight that orb of light Shall humbler orbs obscure. And yet withal, ’tis shadow all Whate’er your fancies dream, And I (misdeemed) that was, that seemed, Am not, whate’er I seem. _‘WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS, NEITHER SHADOW OF TURNING.’_ It fortifies my soul to know That, though I perish, Truth is so: That, howsoe’er I stray and range, Whate’er I do, Thou dost not change. I steadier step when I recall That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall. _IN STRATIS VIARUM._ Blessed are those who have not seen, And who have yet believed The witness, here that has not been, From heaven they have received. Blessed are those who have not known The things that stand before them, And for a vision of their own Can piously ignore them. So let me think whate’er befall, That in the city duly Some men there are who love at all, Some women who love truly;