But Luther’s broom is left, and eyes
    Peep o’er their creeds to where it lies. 
      Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 
      Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 70
      In the shadow, year out, year in,
      The silent headsman waits forever.

[Footnote 25:  There was more than one Pope Gregory, but Gregory VII in the eleventh century brought the papacy to its supreme power, when kings humbled themselves before the Pope.]

    Smooth sails the ship of either realm,
    Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm;
    We look down the depths, and mark 75
    Silent workers in the dark
    Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs,
    Old instincts hardening to new beliefs;
    Patience a little; learn to wait;
    Hours are long on the clock of Fate. 80
      Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 
      Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 
      Darkness is strong, and so is Sin,
      But only God endures forever!

THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY.

    “Come forth!” my catbird calls to me,
      “And hear me sing a cavatina
    That, in this old familiar tree,
      Shall hang a garden of Alcina.

    “These buttercups shall brim with wine 5
      Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic;
    May not New England be divine? 
      My ode to ripening summer classic?

    “Or, if to me you will not hark,
      By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing 10
    Till all the alder-coverts dark
      Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing.

    “Come out beneath the unmastered sky,
      With its emancipating spaces,
    And learn to sing as well as I, 15
      Without premeditated graces.

    “What boot your many-volumed gains,
      Those withered leaves forever turning,
    To win, at best, for all your pains,
      A nature mummy-wrapt in learning? 20

    “The leaves wherein true wisdom lies
      On living trees the sun are drinking;
    Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies,
      Grew not so beautiful by thinking.

    “Come out! with me the oriole cries, 25
      Escape the demon that pursues you! 
    And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise,
      Still hiding, farther onward wooes you.”

    “Alas, dear friend, that, all my days,
      Has poured from thy syringa thicket 30
    The quaintly discontinuous lays
      To which I hold a season-ticket,—­

    “A season-ticket cheaply bought
      With a dessert of pilfered berries,
    And who so oft my soul has caught 35
      With morn and evening voluntaries,—­