I There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all: And where it cometh, all things are; And it cometh everywhere. II I am owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar’s hand, and Plato’s brain, Of Lord Christ’s heart, and Shakspeare’s strain.

Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals;– The sower scatters broad his seed; The wheat thou strew’st be souls.

Nature centres into balls, And her proud ephemerals, Fast to surface and outside, Scan the profile of the sphere; Knew they what that signified, A new genesis were here.

In countless upward-striving waves The moon-drawn tide-wave strives; In thousand far-transplanted grafts The parent fruit survives; So, in the new-born millions, The perfect Adam lives. Not less are summer mornings dear To every child they wake, And each with novel life his sphere Fills for his proper sake.

Gifts of one who loved me,– ‘T was high time they came; When he ceased to love me, Time they stopped for shame.

In the suburb, in the town, On the railway, in the square, Came a beam of goodness down Doubling daylight everywhere: Peace now each for malice takes, Beauty for his sinful weeds, For the angel Hope aye makes Him an angel whom she leads.

His tongue was framed to music, And his hand was armed with skill; His face was the mould of beauty, And his heart the throne of will.

Who shall tell what did befall, Far away in time, when once, Over the lifeless ball, Hung idle stars and suns? What god the element obeyed? Wings of what wind the lichen bore, Wafting the puny seeds of power, Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade? And well the primal pioneer Knew the strong task […]

Flow, flow the waves hated, Accursed, adored, The waves of mutation; No anchorage is. Sleep is not, death is not; Who seem to die live. House you were born in, Friends of your spring-time, Old man and young maid, Day’s toil and its guerdon, They are all vanishing, Fleeing to fables, Cannot be moored. See […]

High was her heart, and yet was well inclined, Her manners made of bounty well refined; Far capitals and marble courts, her eye still seemed to see, Minstrels and kings and high-born dames, and of the best that be.

Every thought is public, Every nook is wide; Thy gossips spread each whisper, And the gods from side to side.

He who has no hands Perforce must use his tongue; Foxes are so cunning Because they are not strong.

Quit the hut, frequent the palace, Reck not what the people say; For still, where’er the trees grow biggest, Huntsmen find the easiest way.

Ever the Poet from the land Steers his bark and trims his sail; Right out to sea his courses stand, New worlds to find in pinnace frail. POET To clothe the fiery thought In simple words succeeds, For still the craft of genius is To mask a king in weeds.

True Brahmin, in the morning meadows wet, Expound the Vedas of the violet, Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop, See the plum redden, and the beurre stoop.

Go thou to thy learned task, I stay with the flowers of Spring: Do thou of the Ages ask What me the Hours will bring.

He took the color of his vest From rabbit’s coat or grouse’s breast; For, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide, So walks the woodman, unespied.

The sea is the road of the bold, Frontier of the wheat-sown plains, The pit wherein the streams are rolled And fountain of the rains.

The gale that wrecked you on the sand, It helped my rowers to row; The storm is my best galley hand And drives me where I go.

Over his head were the maple buds, And over the tree was the moon, And over the moon were the starry studs That drop from the angels’ shoon.