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CHARACTER

THE sun set, but set not his hope:
Stars rose; his faith was earlier up:
Fixed on the enormous galaxy,

Deeper and older seemed his eye;
And matched his sufferance sublime
The taciturnity of time.'

He spoke, and words more soft than rain
Brought the Age of Gold again :

His action won such reverence sweet
As hid all measure of the feat.

CULTURE

CAN rules or tutors educate
The semigod whom we await?
He must be musical,
Tremulous, impressional,
Alive to gentle influence
Of landscape and of sky,
And tender to the spirit-touch
Of man's or maiden's eye :
But, to his native centre fast,

Shall into Future fuse the Past,

And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast.

FRIENDSHIP

A RUDDY drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs,

The world uncertain comes and goes;
The lover rooted stays.

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And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness,

Like daily sunrise there.

My careful heart was free again,
O friend, my bosom said,

Through thee alone the sky is arched,

Through thee the rose is red;

All things through thee take nobler form,

And look beyond the earth,

The mill-round of our fate appears

A sun-path in thy worth.

Me too thy nobleness has taught

To master my despair;

The fountains of my hidden life

Are through thy friendship fair.'

SPIRITUAL LAWS

THE living Heaven thy prayers respect,
House at once and architect,
Quarrying man's rejected hours,
Builds therewith eternal towers;
Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,

And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,

Makes flame to freeze and ice to boil;
Forging, through swart arms of Offence,
The silver seat of Innocence.'

BEAUTY

Was never form and never face
So sweet to SEYD as only grace
Which did not slumber like a stone,
But hovered gleaming and was gone.
Beauty chased he everywhere,
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air.
He smote the lake to feed his eye

With the beryl beam of the broken wave;
He flung in pebbles well to hear
The moment's music which they gave.
Oft pealed for him a lofty tone
From nodding pole and belting zone.
He heard a voice none else could hear
From centred and from errant sphere.
The quaking earth did quake in rhyme,
Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime.
In dens of passion, and pits of woe,
He saw strong Eros struggling through,
To sun the dark and solve the curse,
And beam to the bounds of the universe.
While thus to love he gave his days
In loyal worship, scorning praise,
How spread their lures for him in vain
Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain!
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.'

MANNERS

GRACE, Beauty and Caprice

Build this golden portal;

Graceful women, chosen men,

Dazzle every mortal.

Their sweet and lofty countenance

His enchanted food;

He need not go to them, their forms
Beset his solitude.

He looketh seldom in their face,
His eyes explore the ground,
The green grass is a looking-glass
Whereon their traits are found.'
Little and less he says to them,
So dances his heart in his breast;
Their tranquil mien bereaveth him
Of wit, of words, of rest.

Too weak to win, too fond to shun
The tyrants of his doom,

The much deceived Endymion
Slips behind a tomb.2

ART

GIVE to barrows, trays and pans
Grace and glimmer of romance;
Bring the moonlight into noon
Hid in gleaming piles of stone;
On the city's paved street

Plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet;
Let spouting fountains cool the air,
Singing in the sun-baked square;
Let statue, picture, park and hall,

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