THE VISIT ASKEST,' How long thou shalt stay?' Know, each substance and relation, Than the meeting of the eyes? Nature poureth into nature Through the channels of that feature, Riding on the ray of sight, Fleeter far than whirlwinds go, Or for service, or delight, Hearts to hearts their meaning show, Sum their long experience, And import intelligence. Single look has drained the breast; Single moment years confessed. The duration of a glance Is the term of convenance, And, though thy rede be church or state, Frugal multiples of that. Speeding Saturn cannot halt; Linger, thou shalt rue the fault : If Love his moment overstay, URIEL It fell in the ancient periods Or ever the wild Time coined itself This was the lapse of Uriel, Which in Paradise befell. Once, among the Pleiads walking, Seyd overheard the young gods talking; And stirred the devils everywhere, The stern old war-gods shook their heads, The rash word boded ill to all; The balance-beam of Fate was bent; A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell In heaven once eminent, the god Or by knowledge grown too bright Stole over the celestial kind, If in ashes the fire-seed slept. But now and then, truth-speaking things And, shrilling from the solar course, THE WORLD-SOUL THANKS to the morning light, To the boy with his games undaunted Cities of proud hotels, Houses of rich and great, Vice nestles in your chambers, Beneath your roofs of slate. It cannot conquer folly, Time-and-space-conquering steam, – And the light-outspeeding telegraph Bears nothing on its beam. The politics are base; The letters do not cheer; And 't is far in the deeps of history, The voice that speaketh clear. Trade and the streets ensnare us, Our bodies are weak and worn; We plot and corrupt each other, And we despoil the unborn. Yet there in the parlor sits The inevitable morning Finds them who in cellars be; Yon sky between the walls, |