Imparting life renew'd, old classic grace; Then, soothing with thy Christian strain forlorn, A-Kempis! her departing soul outworn, While by her bedside Hebrew rites have place-- Ah, not the radiant spirit of Greece alone She had--one power, which made her breast its home! In her, like us, there clash'd, contending powers, Germany, France, Christ, Moses, Athens, Rome. The strife, the mixture in her soul, are ours; Her genius and her glory are her own. WORLDLY PLACE _Even in a palace, life may be led well!_ So spake the imperial sage, purest of men, Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell, Our freedom for a little bread we sell, And drudge under some foolish master's ken Who rates us if we peer outside our pen-- Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell? _Even in a palace!_ On his truth sincere, Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came; And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win, I'll stop, and say: "There were no succour here! The aids to noble life are all within." EAST LONDON 'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, And the pale weaver, through his windows seen In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited. I met a preacher there I knew, and said: "Ill and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this scene?"-- "Bravely!" said he; "for I of late have been Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, _the living bread_." O human soul! as long as thou canst so Set up a mark of everlasting light, Above the howling senses' ebb and flow, To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam-- Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night! Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home. WEST LONDON Crouch'd on the pavement, close by Belgrave Square, A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied. A babe was in her arms, and at her side A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare. Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there, Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied Across, and begg'd, and came back satisfied. The rich she had let pass with frozen stare. Thought I: "Above her state this spirit towers; She will not ask of aliens, but of friends, Of sharers in a common human fate. "She turns from that cold succour, which attends The unknown little from the unknowing great, And points us to a better time than ours." EAST AND WEST In the bare midst of Anglesey they show Two springs which close by one another play; And, "Thirteen hundred years agone," they say, "Two saints met often where those waters flow. "One came from Penmon westward, and a glow Whiten'd his face from the sun's fronting ray; Eastward the other, from the dying day, And he with unsunn'd face did always go."