Their angel out of them, a demon in. This half-enlightened heart, still doomed to fret, To hurl at vanities, to drift in shame Of gain or loss, bewailing the sure rod, Shall of predestination wed thee yet. Something it gathers of what things should drop At entrance on new times; of how thrice broad The world of minds communicative; how A straggling Nature classed in school, and scored With stripes admonishing, may yield to plough Fruitfullest furrows, nor for waxing tame Be feeble on an Earth whose gentler crop Is its most living, in the mind that steers, By Reason led, her way of tree and flame, Beyond the genuflexions and the tears; Upon an Earth that cannot stop, Where upward is the visible aim, And ever we espy the greater God, For simple pointing at a good adored: Proof of the closer neighbourhood. Head on, Sword of the many, light of the few! untwist Or cut our tangles till fair space is won Beyond a briared wood of austere brow, Believed of discord by thy timely word At intervals refreshing life: for thou Art verify Keeper of the Muse’s Key; Thyself no vacant melodist; On lower land elective even as she; Holding, as she, all dissonance abhorred; Advising to her measured steps in flow; And teaching how for being subjected free Past thought of freedom we may come to know The music of the meaning of Accord. YOUTH IN MEMORY DAYS, when the ball of our vision Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun; When the grasp on the bow was decision, And arrow and hand and eye were one; When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer, Came heaving for rapture ahead!— Invoke them, they dwindle, they glimmer As lights over mounds of the dead. Behold the winged Olympus, off the mead, With thunder of wide pinions, lightning speed, Wafting the shepherd-boy through ether clear, To bear the golden nectar-cup. So flies desire at view of its delight, When the young heart is tiptoe perched on sight. We meanwhile who in hues of the sick year The Spring-time paint to prick us for our lost, Mount but the fatal half way up— Whereon shut eyes! This is decreed, For Age that would to youthful heavens ascend, By passion for the arms’ possession tossed, It falls the way of sighs and hath their end; A spark gone out to more sepulchral night. Good if the arrowy eagle of the height Be then the little bird that hops to feed.