The very sameness of the hills and sky

Is obduracy, and the lingering hours

Wait round me dumbly, like superfluous slaves,
Of whom I want nought but the secret news
They are forbid to tell.

(To Silva.)—We may not make this world a paradise By walking it together hand in hand,

With eyes that meeting feed a double strength.

We must be only joined by pains divine

Of spirits blent in mutual memories.

Silva, our joy is dead.

. . We must walk

Apart unto the end. Our marriage rite
Is our resolve that we will each be true
To high allegiance, higher than our love.
Our dear young love-its breath was happiness!
But it had grown upon a larger life

Which tore its roots asunder.

R

We rebelled

Our whimpering poesy and small-paced tunes

Have no more utterance than the cricket's chirp

For souls that carry heaven and hell within.

For lack of soul; some hungry poets chirp
For lack of bread. 'Twere wiser to sit down

And count the star-seed, till I fell asleep
With the cheap wine of pure stupidity.

I'm a plucked peacock-even my voice and wit
Without a tail!—why, any fool detects

The absence of your tail, but twenty fools
May not detect the presence of your wit.

--0

Hem taken rightly, any single thing,
The Rabbis say, implies all other things.
A knotty task, though, the unravelling
Meum and Tuum from a saraband:
It needs a subtle logic, nay, perhaps
A good large property, to see the thread.

Can spin an insubstantial universe

Suiting our mood, and call it possible,
Sooner than see one grain with eye exact
And give strict record of it. Yet by chance.
Our fancies may be truth and make us seers.
'Tis a rare teeming world, so harvest-full,
Even guessing ignorance may pluck some fruit.

Men who are sour at missing larger game

May wing a chattering sparrow for revenge.

There's more of odd than even in this world.

Else pretty sinners would not be let off
Sooner than ugly; for if honeycombs
Are to be got by stealing, they should go
Where life is bitterest on the tongue.

To bet upon that feather Policy,

And guess where after twice a hundred puffs
"Twill catch another feather crossing it :

Guess how the Pope will blow and how the king;
What force my lady's fan has; how a cough
Seizing the Padre's throat may raise a gust,
And how the queen may sigh the feather down.
Such catching at imaginary threads,

Such spinning twisted air, is not for me.

If I should want a game, I'll rather bet

On racing snails, two large, slow, lingering snailsNo spurring, equal weights-a chance sublime, Nothing to guess at, pure uncertainty.

Your teaching orthodoxy with faggots may only bring up a fashion of roasting.

Knightly love is blent with reverence

As heavenly air is blent with heavenly blue.

Fedalma.+Good Juan, I could have no nobler

friend.

You'd ope your veins and let your life-blood out
To save another's pain, yet hide the deed

With jesting-say, 'twas merest accident,

A sportive scratch that went by chance too deepAnd die content with men's slight thoughts of you, Finding your glory in another's joy. \

Juan.-Dub not my likings virtues, lest they get A drug-like taste, and breed a nausea.

Honey's not sweet, commended as cathartic.
Such names are parchment labels upon gems
Hiding their colour. What is lovely seen
Priced in a tarif ?—lapis lazuli,

Such bulk, so many drachmas: amethysts
Quoted at so much; sapphires higher still.
The stone like solid heaven in its blueness
Is what I care for, not its name or price.
So, if I live or die to serve my friend,
'Tis for my love—'tis for my friend alone,
And not for any rate that friendship bears
In heaven or on earth.

Fedalma.

Men say they have none.

Zincali's faith?

Zarca.

Oh, it is a faith

Taught by no priest, but by their beating hearts :

Faith to each other: the fidelity

Of fellow-wanderers in a desert place

Who share the same dire thirst, and therefore share

The scanty water: the fidelity

Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire,
Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands,
The speech that even in lying tells the truth
Of heritage inevitable as past deeds,
Nay, in the silent bodily presence feel
The mystic stirring of a common life
Which makes the many one: fidelity

To the deep consecrating oath our sponsor Fate

Made through our infant breath when we were born,
The fellow-heirs of that small island, Life,

Where we must dig and sow and reap with brothers.
Fear thou that oath, my daughter-nay not fear,
But love it ; for the sanctity of oaths
Lies not in lightning that avenges them,
But in the injury wrought by broken bonds
And in the garnered good of human trust.

Let men contemn us: 'tis such blind contempt That leaves the wingèd broods to thrive in warmth Unheeded, till they fill the air like storms.

So we shall thrive-still darkly shall draw force