Love to his singer held a glistening leaf, And said: 'The rose-tree and the apple-tree Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee; And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief, Victorious Summer; aye, and 'neath warm sea Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably Between the filtering channels of sunk reef. All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang; But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang From those worse things the wind is moaning of. Only this laurel dreads no winter days: Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.' PART II. CHANGE AND FATE TRANSFIGURED LIFE As growth of form or momentary glance In a child's features will recall to mind The father's with the mother's face combin'd,-- Sweet interchange that memories still enhance: And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance, The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind, Till in the blended likeness now we find A separate man's or woman's countenance:-- So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain, Its very parents, evermore expand To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain, By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd; And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand There comes the sound as of abundant rain. THE SONG-THROE By thine own tears thy song must tears beget, O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own Anguish or ardour, else no amulet. Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh, That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet. The Song-god--He the Sun-god--is no slave Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul Fledges his shaft: to no august control Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave: But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart, The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart. THE SOUL'S SPHERE Come prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,-- Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre Blazed with momentous memorable fire;-- Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these? Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight Conjectured in the lamentable night?... Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images! What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van Of Love's unquestioning unreveale'd span,-- Visions of golden futures: or that last Wild pageant of the accumulated past That clangs and flashes for a drowning man. INCLUSIVENESS