If there be a land
Where our longings stand,
Like angels strong and sweet
With wings at head and feet,
Released from their long ward
And durance, put on guard
For strength and meetness,
All the stronger for their sweetness,
All the sweeter for their strength,-
In such a land at length,
I wonder, would it ever be
That I could give a little love to thee?


If in such a place
I should see a face
Seen now so long ago
That I should scarcely know
If it might be the same;
And if one spoke my name,
However faintly,
In the old way,-stealing saintly,
Like a chant upon my ear,-
In such a place I fear
Me, it could never, never be
That thou couldst have a little love from me.

The Terrible Test

Separate, upon the folded page
Of myth or marvel, sad or glad,
The test that gave the Lord to thee,
And thee to us, O Galahad!


'Found pure in deed, and word, and thought,'
The creature of our dream and guess,
The vision of the brain thou art,
The eidolon of holiness.


Man with the power of the God,
Man with the weaknesses of men,
Whose lips the Sangreal leaned to feed,
'Whose strength was the strength of ten.'


We read-and smile; no man thou wast;
No human pulses thine could be;
With downcast eyes we read-and sigh;
So terrible is purity!


O fairest legend of the years,
With folded wings, go, silently!
O flower of knighthood, yield your place
To One who comes from Galilee!


To wounded feet that shrink and bleed,
But press and climb the narrow way,-
The same old way our own must step,
Forever, yesterday, to-day.


For soul can be what soul hath been,
And feet can tread where feet have trod.
Enough, to know that once the clay
Hath worn the features of the God.

You do not lift your eyes to watch
Us pass the conscious door;
Your startled ear perceiveth not
Our footfall on the floor;
No eager word your lips betray
To greet us when we stand;
We throng to meet you, but you hold
To us no beckoning hand.


Faint as the years in which we breathed,
Far as the death we died,
Dim as the faded battle-smoke,
We wander at your side;
Cold as a cause outlived, or lost,
Vague as the legends told
At twilight, of a mystic band
Circling an Age of Gold.


Unseen, unheard, unfelt-and yet,
Beneath the army blue
Our heart-beats sounded real enough
When we were boys like you.
We turned us from your fabled lore,
With ancient passion rife;
No myth, our solemn laying down
Of love, and hope, and life.


No myth, the clasped and severed hands,
No dream, the last replies.
Upon the desolated home
To-day, the sunlight lies.
Take, sons of peace, your heritage-
Our loss, your legacy;
Our action be your fables fair,
Our facts, your poetry.


O ye who fall on calmer times!
The perils of the calm
Are yours-the swell, the sloth, the sleep,
The carelessness of harm,
The keel that rides the gale, to strike
Where the warm waves are still;
Ours were the surf, the stir, the shock,
The tempest and the thrill.


Comrades, be yours that vigor old,
Be yours the elected power
That fits a man, like rock to tide,
To his appointed hour;
Yours to become all that we were,
And all we might have been;
Yours the fine eye that separates
The unseen from the seen.

Of A Family Of Reformers

Push the bursting buds away,
Throw aside the ripened roses,
Hush the low-voiced waters' play,
Where the weary sun reposes
With his head upon his hand,
Grave and grand!
Now I stand,
And shade my eyes to see
What life shall mean to me.


Cut the silver-hearted mist
Stealing softly down the valley;
Blot me out the purple, kissed
By phantoms crowned in gold, that rally
Merrily upon the land,
Gay and grand.
Here I stand,
And turn my eyes to see
What life may mean to me.


There seems-a path across a hill,
But little worn (but little lonely),
A climb into the twilight still;
There seems-a midnight watch, and only
Through the dark a low command
(Grave and grand),
'Still you stand,
And strain your eyes to see
What life to you shall be.'


The binding up of bruiséd reéds
Of thought and act; the steady bearing
Out of scorned purposes to deeds,
The rest of strife; the doubt of daring,-
The hope that He will understand
Why my hand
(Though I stand)
Trembles at my eyes to see
What else life means to me.


The dropping of love's golden fruit,
The slowly builded walls of distance,
The outstretched hand, the meeting foot,
Withdrawn in doubt, and drear, late chance
Of cooling autumn; wind and sand
On the land.-
But I stand,
And brush my tears to see
All that life means to me.


The honest choice of good or ill,
A heart of marble, prayer, and fire,
The strength to do, the power to will
From earth's reluctance, Heaven's desire,
And God's step upon the land
(Grave and grand).
Glad I stand
And lift my eyes to see
The life He sends to me.

You told the story of your love;
I heard as one who did not hear;
Across the opening lips of hope
Crept the slow finger of a fear.


Against the kind deceit which hides
From love's beginning all love's end,
In thoughtful mood I boldly lift
The honest trouble of a friend.


You 've chosen thus: not thus, indeed,
I would have chosen fate for you,
And if you missed the possible
And for the sweet had lost the true;


If 'neath the perfect palm of love
You might have knelt,-in kneeling, blest,-
And if you chose instead to wear
A little rose upon your breast;


If, for the tidal wave of life
Mistook a little ripple blue,
While fathoms deep below your line
The sea's lost treasures sleep for you;


Why, then, what then? You 've only missed
A wealth your calm eyes never saw.
Be fate and nature kind to you,
Yourself unto yourself your law!


No Moses ever part for you
The wonders of the deep's rich gloom!
Nor ever lead, the dry sands o'er,
Into the long-lost palm-land's bloom!


Ah! never, never may you know,
For little waves trip merrily;
And never, never may you know,
For sweet the little roses be.


And should my doubts and dreams be both
Blindfold, as dreams and doubts may be;
Should love's unwisdom truer prove
To you than my wise fears to me;


Since God's own purpose over ours
Is folded softly like a wing,
And love's best knowledge to love's self
Must own, I know not anything!


Why then-ah! then. Go you his ways,
Not mine. His is the summer sea,
On which the little waves shall trip;
And his the little roses be.


But if into one lot there came
(As into one I haply knew)
The flower's scent, the forest's strength,
The depth's reserve, the ripple's hue;


If it fell out to Heaven's mind
To give one both the sweet and true,-
Though Heaven asked it back again,-
That lost lot I 'd not change with you.

Oh, not to you, my mentor sweet,
And stern as only sweetness can,
Whose grave eyes look out steadfastly
Across my nature's plan,


And take unerring measure down
Where'er that plan is failed or foiled,
Thinking far less of purpose kept
Than of a vision spoiled.


And tender less to what I am,
Than sad for what I might have been;
And walking softly before God
For my soul's sake, I ween.


'T is not to you, my spirit leans,
O grave, true judge! When spent with strife,
And groping out of gloom for light,
And out of death for life.


Nor yet to you, who calmly weigh
And measure every grace and fault,
Whose martial nature never turns
From right to left, to halt


For any glamour of the heart,
Or any glow that ever is,
Grander than Truth's high noonday glare,
In love's sweet sunrises;


Who know me by the duller hues
Of common nights and common days,
And in their sober atmospheres
Find level blame and praise.


True hearts and dear! 't is not in you,
This fainting, warring soul of mine
Finds silver carven chalices,
To hold life's choicest wine


Unto its thirsty lips, and bid
It drink, and breathe, and battle on,
Till all its dreams are deeds at last,
And all its heights are won.


I turn to you, confiding love.
O lifted eyes! look trustfully,
Till Heaven shall lend you other light,
Like kneeling saints-on me.


And let me be to you, dear eyes,
The thing I am not, till I, too,
Shall see as I am seen, and stand
At last revealed to you.


And let me nobler than I am,
And braver still, eternally,
And finer, truer, purer, than
My finest, purest, be


To your sweet vision. There I stand
Transfigured fair in love's deceit,
And while your soul looks up to mine,
My heart lies at your feet.


Believe me better than my best,
And stronger than my strength can hold,
Until your magic faith transmute
My pebbles into gold.


I'll be the thing you hold me, Dear!-
After I'm dead, if not before-
Nor, through the climbing ages, will
I give the conflict o'er.


But if upon the Perfect Peace,
And past the thing that was, and is,
And past the lure of voices, in
A world of silences,


A pain can crawl-a little one-
A cloud upon a sunlit land;
I think in Heaven my heart must ache-
That you should understand.

'Would I could see!' I heard one say but now,
'The strongest woman and the tenderest man
That ever God had dared put in the world!'
And I, who did not speak, because one can
Tell out one's sweetest secret to the sky
Sometimes with greater ease than one can speak
It at some others to a friend's close ear,
Went up into the gallery of my soul
Silent and smiling and assured, to see
Some pictures that are hung there on the wall,
Whereat my soul and I on leisure days
Sit gazing and sit thirsting by ourselves.
And one there is that looketh down to me
Less like a face than like a star, for when
With closed eyes I would think what it is like
I only can remember that it shines.
But when I turn again to con and learn
Its lineaments like a lesson in my thought,
The forehead has the look that marble has
When it has drawn the sunlight to its heart.
And if St. John had fought the Dragon, then
He might have had perhaps such eyes as that
(But still I do not tell you what the eyes
Are like, nor can I, and I am not sure,
Indeed, that I should tell you if I could).
O, straight they look the world into the face!
And never have they dropped before its gaze,
And never sunk they down abashed, to hide
A glance of which their own light was ashamed.
And if an unclean thing had chanced to step
Into the presence of such eyes, pierced, scorched,
It would have shrunk before their stabs, but ere
It could have risen to flee, it would have dropped,
And cowered moaning in the dust, because
It felt itself a thing they pitied so!
And then the mouth!-I never saw a mouth,
Another one, that seemed to think and feel
At once like this. If haply lips like these
Had found a word for which the whole round earth
Were waiting, while they spoke the word, I think
They 'd quiver most because upon that day
The woman that they loved had touched them,-said,
'Go speak, my lips, and make me proud!'-the most
For that than for the worth of either work or world.


And one there is (across the gallery's width
This picture hangs), a graver face, and touched
A little with a sadness such as that
Which might have fallen on the countenance
Of Esther in the story, when she left
Her throne to perish for her people's sake;
The sadness of a soul bound fast to bear-
Whether by fate or choice it knoweth not-
Within itself the sorrows of a race,
A kind, to which it has no gladder tie
Than the blind old mystery of kin; urged on
By something in its nature like a cry
That will be heard, come life, come death! to lay
Aside the crown, the robe of royalty,
And mediate, a suppliant, for its own.
If she perish, she must perish!-but must go.
Though she perish, let her perish!-let her go.
Soft falls the hair about this other face,
Leaving a shadow like a shadow thrown
By leafless trees upon a snow-drift's brow,
A slender shelter for the dazzling white.
And out from it look steady eyes that hide
Their perfect meaning from the casual gaze,
And out from it there leans a flying smile,
As one smiles turning slowly from the page
In which his heart is left to hear
The sweetest interruption in the world
More languidly than lovingly. I think
You 'd never pause to speculate or guess
Which interruption were the dearer fret
To her, but only what the lesson was
O'er which she bent, and only wonder on
If Esther had a smile like that; and if
Her people, when they saw it, understood
The half of it; and if the King will hold,
As did Ahasuerus in the time
Of old, his sceptre out, and ever call
This unqueened Queen in triumph to her throne.


And if there were on earth a tenderer strength?
Or if there were a stronger tenderness?
What matters it to me? for now behold!
That gallery in my longing soul is full,
And God himself came up and shut the door.

Of Peter's daughter, it is said, men told,
While yet she breathed, a tale as sad as life,
As sweet as death; which, now she sleeps, has lent
The borrower Time its lighter tints, and holds
Only the shadowed outline of a grief
Before our eyes.
Thus much remains. She lived,
Yet lived not; breathed, yet stifled; ate, but starved;
The ears of life she had, but heard not; eyes,
But saw not; hands, but handled neither bud
Nor fruit of joy: for the great word of God,
In some dim crevice of eternal thought
Which he called Petronilla, had gone forth
Against her-for her-call it what we may,
And, bending to his will unerringly,
As bends the golden feather of the grain
Before the footsteps of the mailed west-wind,
Since childhood she had lain upon her bed
In peace and pain, nor had ever raised her body
Once to its young lithe length, to view the dawn
Of all her young lithe years, nor had once laid
Her little feverish feet upon the face
Of the cool, mocking, steadfast floor which laughed
When other girls, with other thinking done
Some time in Heaven about their happy names,-
Set like a song about their happy names,-
Tripped on it like a trill.
As one may see
Upon the hushed lips of a Sabbath-day
A church door sliding softly as a smile,
To let the solemn summer sunshine in
To dream upon, but neither guess nor tell
The dusky week-day secrets which the dome
Whispers the darkened niches and the nave,
Where in the purple silence which they love
The marble angels sleep, or weep, or sing,
(Who knoweth what they do on Monday mornings?)
So slides the tale on Petronilla, left
Upon a certain dull, wan day alone,
Her face turned on her pillow to the room
Wherein the wise and faithful met (for faith
With wisdom married then; none forbid the banns
Within the temple of the hearts of men),
To break their bread with Peter, and discourse
Of all the sacred, secret things; the hopes,
The fears, the solemn ecstasies, and dreams,
And deeds, which held life in the arms of death,
For the first namers of the name of Christ.
And lying there, at rest, adream, asleep,
She scarce could tell her state, so dim it was,
Such lifeless reflex of the hueless day,
A voice struck Petronilla,-Peter's voice,
Solemn and mighty as a lonely wave
Upon an untrod shore. 'O brethren, hark!
Ye know not what ye say; your minds are dark.
O ye of little faith, I show you then!
By his great power I show you. Watch with me,
For he is here. Abase your heads; he lives;
It is his will I do his will, and show
The power of God in that he once hath lived
And died, but lives to work his glory still,-
To work his wish, unargued, undisturbed,
Without resistance or appeal or blame,
Upon the creature which his hands have made.
Were it his choice to raise yon maiden now
From out the coffin of her bed, and bid
Her step,-or live; it means the same,-what then?
Is that too much for him to do? What now?
Is that too hard? Increase your faith! Behold!'


Awake, asleep, adream, or all, or none,
What ailéd Petronilla? The world spun
Like a frail spindle in a woman's hands.
And all her breath went from her, and her sight,
At the faint fancy of her father, still,
Alone, alight within the room; as solemn
And sad and glad as had a vision been
Of a choice taper set to spend itself,
And blaze and waste upon an altar's brow,
Not taught nor knowing wherefore,-burning out,
Since that 's a taper's nature, and enough.
And faint the fancy of his face, if his
It were. And faint the fancy of his voice,
Which lost its way, so Petronilla thought,
Or twice or thrice, before it bridged the bit
Of fanciful, faint sunlight which crawled in
Between his pitying, awful face and hers,
And 'Petronilla,' sighing softly, said,
And 'Petronilla!' ringing cried, 'Arise!
'Now, in the name of Christ who lived for thee,
I bid thee live, and rise, and walk!'
Erect,
Unaided, with a step of steel, she rose.
What should she do but rise? And walked; how else?
For God had said it, sent it, dropped it down,
The sweetest, faintest fancy of her life.
And fancying faintly how her feet dropped far
Below the dizzy dancing of her eyes,
Adown the listening floor; and fancying
How all the rising winds crept mutely up
The court, and put their arms around her neck
For joy; and how for joy the sun broke through
The visor which the envious day had held
Across his happy face, and kissed her hair;
And fancying faintly how those men shrank back,
And pulled their great gray beards at sight of her,
And nodded, as becometh holy men,
Approvingly, at wonders, as indeed
They 'd bade her walk themselves,-so musingly,
As she had been a fancy of herself,
She found herself live, warm and young, within
The borders of the live, warm world.
But still,
As faintly as a fancy fell the voice
Of Peter: 'Serve us, daughter, at the board.'
And dimly as a fancy served she them,
And sweetly as a fancy to and fro
Across the gold net of the lightening day
She passed and paused.
Caught in its meshes fast;
Tangled into the happy afternoon,
Tangled into the sense of life and youth,
Blind with the sense of motion, leap of health,
And wilderness of undiscovered joy,
Stood Petronilla. Down from out her hand
A little platter dropped, and down upon
Her hands her face dropped, broken like the ware
Of earth that sprinkled all the startled floor,
And down upon her knees her face and hands
Fell, clinging to each other; crouching there
At Peter's feet,-her father's feet,-she gave
One little, little longing cry,-no more;
And like the fancy of a cry,-so faint;
And like the angel of a cry,-so brave.
For Peter's face had lifted like the heavens,
Above the presence of the holy men,
Above the maiden serving in the sun,
Above-God help him!-God's own princely gift,
The pity which a father bears his child.
And far and calm as heaven is shone his smile,
And far and still as heaven is fell his voice,
Yet held a cadence like a prisoned pain,
As one twice-wrecked upon the same bare shore.
'The Lord hath chosen Petronilla. Hearken!
Whom he will choose, he chooseth: some to honor,
Some to dishonor; this to be and bear,
And that to dare and do; these bear his swords,
And these his chains. Nay, but, O man! what then?
Who art thou that shalt mould the mood of God,
Or search his meaning, or defy his will?
On Petronilla he will work his power.
O, what is Petronilla? What am I?
Nay, nay, my child, I tremble; this is wrong.
Thou moanest; that is strange, for he is here
To show his glory on thy young, bent head,
And little smile and hands. O, lift them up
Before him, while I speak the word he sent.
For, by the love of him who died for thee,
Commandment comes; and I must bid thee turn
And lay thee down upon thy patient bed
Again; for what am I, and what art thou?
So turn and lay thee down. Behold it, Lord!
'T is finished, Master! Petronilla, go.
God's hand is on thee, O my child; God's grace
Go with thee. Brethren, see! His will is done,
And shall be done upon us evermore.'
And there the wonder fell, so runs the tale;
For Petronilla turned her dumb as death,
And laid her down upon her empty bed,
Where a long sunbeam warm as life had curled;
And crept within it, white as sifted snow,
Nor ever raised her slender length again,
Nor ever dropped her foot upon the floor,
Nor ever felt the winds from up the court
Weave arms about her neck; nor ever found
Herself entangled more within the gold
Warp of the moving, merry world; nor once
Again knew even the pallid happiness
Which comes of serving holy men; nor felt
The leap of life within her shrivelled veins.
And there the legend breaks: what good or ill
Struck arms or folded wings about the heart
Of Petronilla; how fared she, prisoned
Behind the bars of that untragic woe,
The bearing of an old familiar fate
From which long use has rubbed the gilding out,
To which the wonted hours have set themselves
So sorely they can neither smile nor sigh
To think of it, but only drop the lids
Across their leaden eyes for wondering
What a glad chance an unworn grief must be;
What solemn musings marshalled in his mind
Who was the Rock on which Christ built a church
Of such as love nor son nor daughter more
Than him,-we know not; rude our guesses are,
And rough; and mar the shady, sacred hush
Which the raised fingers of the years enforce.


The story slips,-an echo like the voice
Of far-off, falling water yet unseen;
A puzzle, like our next-door neighbor's life;
A lesson which an angel on the wing
Might drop, but linger not to read to us,
Or mark the stint. Each heart steals forth alone
A little after twilight, and takes home
The leaf, the line, appointed unto it.