Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes Now, leaved how thick! laced they are again With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes Them; birds build--but not I build; no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain. _51 To R. B._ THE fine delight that fathers thought; the strong Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame, Breathes once and, quenched faster than it came, Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song. Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long Within her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same: The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim Now known and hand at work now never wrong. Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this; I want the one rapture of an inspiration. O then if in my lagging lines you miss The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation, My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation. UNFINISHED POEMS & FRAGMENTS _52 Summa_ THE best ideal is the true And other truth is none. All glory be ascribed to The holy Three in One. _53_ WHAT being in rank-old nature should earlier have that breath been That here personal tells off these heart-song powerful peals?-- A bush-browed, beetle-browed billow is it? With a south-westerly wind blustering, with a tide rolls reels Of crumbling, fore-foundering, thundering all-surfy seas in; seen Underneath, their glassy barrel, of a fairy green. . . . . . . . . Or a jaunting vaunting vaulting assaulting trumpet telling _54 On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People A Brother and Sister_ O I admire and sorrow! The heart's eye grieves Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years. A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves, And beauty's dearest veriest vein is tears. Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast: Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest In one fair fall; but, for time's aftercast, Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest. And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beams Their young delightful hour do feature down That fleeted else like day-dissolved dreams Or ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown. She leans on him with such contentment fond As well the sister sits, would well the wife; His looks, the soul's own letters, see beyond, Gaze on, and fall directly forth on life. But ah, bright forelock, cluster that you are Of favoured make and mind and health and youth, Where lies your landmark, seamark, or soul's star? There's none but truth can stead you. Christ is truth.