This is he, who, felled by foes,
Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows: 
He to captivity was sold,
But him no prison-bars would hold: 
Though they sealed him in a rock,
Mountain chains he can unlock: 
Thrown to lions for their meat,
The crouching lion kissed his feet;
Bound to the stake, no flames appalled,
But arched o’er him an honoring vault. 
This is he men miscall Fate,
Threading dark ways, arriving late,
But ever coming in time to crown
The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down. 
He is the oldest, and best known,
More near than aught thou call’st thy own,
Yet, greeted in another’s eyes,
Disconcerts with glad surprise. 
This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers,
Floods with blessings unawares. 
Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line
Severing rightly his from thine,
Which is human, which divine.

PRUDENCE

Theme no poet gladly sung,
Fair to old and foul to young;
Scorn not thou the love of parts,
And the articles of arts. 
Grandeur of the perfect sphere
Thanks the atoms that cohere.

NATURE

I

A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.

II

The rounded world is fair to see,
Nine times folded in mystery: 
Though baffled seers cannot impart
The secret of its laboring heart,
Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west. 
Spirit that lurks each form within
Beckons to spirit of its kin;
Self-kindled every atom glows
And hints the future which it owes.

THE INFORMING SPIRIT

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.

CIRCLES

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.

INTELLECT

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