And step by step, and star by star, lead o'er
The trail again, where eyeless passion tore
Its red way to a soul. Mist-bound and blind
No more, the thinker waits, and God grown kind
Flashes a foot-print where He goes before.

Not to be followed! Falls the cloud again;
Folds the stern form around the striving doubt,
And curve betrays to curve the silent birth
That shall be voice to later times and men;
While lone in unlit dark, within, without,
He sits immortal on a godless earth.

VISION

Look in, O Mystic, on thy lease,
Thou tenant soul in God's demesne;
Forego the show of eyes that fail,
And walk the world that cannot pale,
Thine by a sealed and termless lien
Within His met eternities.

Yet look thou out from thy still hour
With eyes that know and bear His fire;
Till kindling on thy wonder's verge
The transient days immortal merge
In Him fulfilled as worlds expire
In nestled love, a song, a flower.

SAFE

My dream-fruit tree a palace bore
In stone's reality,
And friends and treasure, art and lore,
Came in to dwell with me.

But palaces for gods are made;
I shrank to man, or less;
Gold-barriered, yet chill, afraid,
My soul shook shelterless.

I found a cottage in a wood,
Warmed by a hearth and maid,
And fed and slept, and said 'twas good,--
Ah, love-nest in the shade!

The walls grew close, the roof pressed low,
Soft arms my jailers were;
My naked soul arose to go,
And shivered bright and bare.

No more I sought for covert kind;
The blast blew on my head;
And lo, with tempest and with wind
I felt me garmented.

Here on the hills the writhing storm
Cloaks well and shelters me;
I wrap me round and I am warm,
Warm for eternity.

ON BOSWORTH FIELD

Here, Richard, didst thou fall, caparisoned
With kingdoms of thy lust;
And here wouldst lie, by Fame's bent gleaners shunned,
But came unto thy dust
A swaggerer, perdy!
Who cried "A horse, a horse!" and straight
Thou wert abroad again on kingly feet
To tread eternity.

OLD FAIRINGDOWN

Soft as a treader on mosses
I go through the village that sleeps;
The village too early abed,
For the night still shuffles, a gip