Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death!

As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved

Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved!

He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak.

'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek

In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be

A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man

like to me,

Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a

Hand like this hand

310

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!

I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.

There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,

Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the

alive, the aware:

I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,

As a runner beset by the populace famished for

news

Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews;

And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot

Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not, For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed

All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,

Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the

earth sank to rest.

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Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth

Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;

In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills;

In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;

In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each

with eye sidling still

Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill

That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe:

330

E'en the serpent that slid away silent,-he felt

the new law.

The same stared in the white humid faces up

turned by the flowers;

The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers:

And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low,

With their obstinate, all but hushed voices"E'en so, it is so!"

1845. 1855.

Robert Browning.

VERSES

Supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk
during his solitary abode in the
island of Juan Fernandez

I AM monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute,
From the centre all round to the sea,

I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms

That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.

I am out of humanity's reach,

I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech,
I start at the sound of my own.
The beasts that roam over the plain,

My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man, .
Their tameness is shocking to me.

Society, friendship, and love,
Divinely bestowed upon man,

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16

Oh, had I the wings of a dove,

How soon would I taste you again! My sorrows I then might assuage

In the ways of religion and truth, Might learn from the wisdom of age. And be cheered by the sallies of youth. 24

Religion! what treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word!
More precious than silver and gold,
Or all that this earth can afford.
But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard,
Never sighed at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when a Sabbath appeared.

Ye winds, that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report

Of a land I shall visit no more.
My friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.

How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,

And the swift-winged arrows of light. When I think of my own native land,

In a moment I seem to be there; But alas! recollection at hand

Soon hurries me back to despair.

32

1782.

But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest,
The beast is laid down in his lair,
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There's mercy in every place,
And mercy, encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace,
And reconciles man to his lot.

56

William Cowper.

LOCKSLEY HALL

COMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn:

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.

'T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,

Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,

And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere

I went to rest,

Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the

West.

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