Beyond the pain, beyond the broken clay, A glimmering country lies Where life is being wise, All of the beauty seen by truthful eyes Are lilies there, growing beside the way. Those golden ones will loose the torted hands, Smooth the scarred brow, gather the breaking soul, Whose earthly moments drop like falling sands To leave the spirit whole. Only a penny, a penny, Lilies brighter than any, Lilies whiter than snow. Beautiful lilies grow Wherever the truth so sweet Has trodden with bloody feet, Has stood with a bloody brow. Friend, it is over now, The passion, the sweat, the pains, Only the truth remains. * * * * * I cannot see what others see; Wisdom alone is kind to me, Wisdom that comes from Agony. * * * * * Wisdom that lives in the pure skies, The untouched star, the spirit’s eyes; O Beauty, touch me, make me wise. _Selections from_ _LOLLINGDON DOWNS_ O wretched man, that for a little mile Crawls beneath heaven for his brother’s blood, Whose days the planets number with their style, To whom all earth is slave, all living, food! O withering man, within whose folded shell Lies yet the seed, the spirit’s quickening corn, That Time and Sun will change out of the cell Into green meadows, in the world unborn! If Beauty be a dream, do but resolve And fire shall come, that in the stubborn clay Works to make perfect till the rocks dissolve, The barriers burst, and Beauty takes her way: Beauty herself, within whose blossoming Spring Even wretched man shall clap his hands and sing. Out of the special cell’s most special sense Came the suggestion when the light was sweet; All skill, all beauty, all magnificence, Are hints so caught, man’s glimpse of the complete. And, though the body rots, that sense survives; Being of life’s own essence, it endures (Fruit of the spirit’s tillage in men’s lives) Round all this ghost that wandering flesh immures. That is our friend, who, when the iron brain Assails, or the earth clogs, or the sun hides, Is the good God to whom none calls in vain, Man’s Achieved Good, which, being Life, abides: The man-made God, that man in happy breath Makes in despite of Time and dusty Death.