Wisdom, when she saw Earth singled
    From the bright commingled band,
  Whispered Mercy:  “That green wonder
    Yonder is thy promised land!”
  Mercy looked and loved Earth straightway,
    At Heaven’s gateway smiling set. 
  Ah! that glance of tender yearning
    She is turning earthward yet.

BEHIND THE VEIL

(After Islwyn, 1832-1878, the Welsh Wordsworth)

  What say ye, can we charge a master soul
  With error, when beyond all life’s experience
  Between the cradle and the grave, it rises,
  Whispering of things unutterable, breaks its bond
  With outward sense and sinks into itself,
  As fades a star in space?  Hath not that soul
  A history in itself, a refluent tide
  Of mystery murmuring out of unplumbed deeps,
  On distant inaccessible strands, whereon
  Memory lies dead amid the monstrous wreckage
  Of jarring worlds?  Are yonder stars above
  As spiritually, magnificently bright
  As Poesy feigns?  May not some slumbering sense,
  A memory dim of those diviner days,
  When all the Heavens were yet aglow with God,
  Transfuse them through and through with glimmering grace
  And glory?  Still the Stars within us shine,
  And Poesy is but a recollection
  Of Something greater gone, a presage proud
  Of Something greater yet to be.  What soul
  But sometimes thrills with hauntings of a world
  For long forgotten, at a glimpse begotten
  Once more, then gone again?  Imaginations? 
  Nay why not memories of a life than ours
  A thousand times more blest within us buried
  So deeply, the divine all-searching breath
  Of Poesy alone can lure it forth. 
  All hail that hour when God’s Redeeming Face
  Shall so illume our past existences,
  That through them all man’s spirit shall see plain,
  And to his blessed past relink Life’s broken chain.

THE REIGN OF LOVE

(After Ceiriog, to a Welsh Air.  Ceiriog, 1832-1887, was the Welsh Burns; his songs to old Welsh Airs are the best of their kind.)

  Love that invites, love that delights,
  From hedgerow lush and leafy heights
    Is flooding all the air;
  Their forest harps the breezes strum,
  The happy brooks their burden hum;
  There’s nothing deaf, there’s nothing dumb,
    But music everywhere!

  Above the airy steep
  Their lyres of gold the angels sweep,
  Glad holiday with earth to keep
    Before the Great White Throne. 
  Then, when Heaven and earth and sea
  Are joining in Love’s jubilee;
  While morning stars make melody,
    Shall man be mute alone?

  Naught that hath birth matches the worth
  Of Love, in God’s own Heaven and Earth,
    For through His power divine
  Love opes the golden eye of day,
  Love guides the pale moon’s lonely way,
  Love lights the glow-worm’s glimmering ray
    Amid the darkling bine.