IV.

    “Despairless?  Hopeless?  Join the cheerful hunt
    Whose hounds are Science, high Desires the steeds,
    And Misery the quarry.  Use and Wont
    No help to human anguish bring, that bleeds
    For all two thousand years of Christian deeds. 
    Let Use and Wont in styes still feed and grunt,
    Or, bovine, graze knee-deep in flowering meads. 
    Mount! follow!  Onward urge Life’s dragon-hunt!”
    —­So cries the sportsman brisk at break of day. 
    “The sound of hound and horn is well for thee,”
    Thus I reply, “but I have other prey;
    And friendly is my quest as you may see. 
    Though slow my pace, full surely in the dark
    I’ll chance on it at last, though none may mark.”

V.

    Hopeless!  Despairless! like that Indian wise
    Free of desire, save no desire to know. 
    To gain that sweet Nirvana each one tries,
    Thinks to assuage soul-wearing passion so. 
    From the white rest, the ante-natal bliss,
    Not loth, the wondrous wondering soul awakes;
    Now drawn to that illusion, now to this,
    With gathering strength each devious pathway takes;
    Till at the noon of life his aims decline;
    Evermore earthward bend the tiring eyes,
    Evermore earthward, till with no surprise
    They see Nirvana from Earth’s bosom shine. 
    The still kind mother holds her child again
    In blank desirelessness without a stain.

VI.

    He comes to me like air on parching grass;
    His eyes are wells where truth lives, found at last;
    Summer is fragrant should he this way pass;
    His calm love is a chain that binds me fast.... 
    Yet often melancholy will forecast
    That time when I shall have grown old—­when he—­
    Still rapturous in his struggle with life’s blast—­
    Shall give a pitying side glance to me,
    Who skirt the fog-fringe of eternity,
    Straining mine eyes to catch what shadowy sign
    Of good or evil omen there may be,
    Yet no sure good nor evil can divine: 
    Only some hints of doubtful sound and light,
    That lonelier leave the uncompanioned night.

VII.

    She scanned the record of Beethoven’s thought,
    And made the dumb chords speak both clear and low,
    And spread the dead man’s voice till I was caught
    Away, and now seemed long and long ago. 
    Methought in Tellus’ bosom still I lay,
    While centuries like steeds tramped overhead,
    To the wild rhythms that, by night and day,
    From nature and man’s passions still are made. 
    The music of their motion as they pranced
    Lulled me to flawless ease as of a God;
    Never upon me pain or pleasure chanced;
    Unknown the dew of bliss, or fate’s hard rod. 
    Thus dreamed I ...  But I know our mother Earth
    Waits to give back the peace she reft at birth.