Slay in me that which would be slain!
Thy justice be my grace!
If aught survive the joy, the pain,
Still must it seek Thy face.
DÜRER’S “MELENCHOLIA”
The bow of promise, this lost flaring star,
Terror and hope are in mid-heaven; but She,
The mighty-wing’d crown’d Lady Melancholy,
Heeds not. O to what vision’d goal afar
Does her thought bear those steadfast eyes which are
A torch in darkness? There nor shore nor sea,
Nor ebbing Time vexes Eternity,
Where that lone thought outsoars the mortal bar.
Tools of the brain—the globe, the cube—no more
She deals with; in her hand the compass stays;
Nor those, industrious genius, of her lore
Student and scribe, thou gravest of the fays,
Expect this secret to enlarge thy store;
She moves through incommunicable ways.
MILLET’S “THE SOWER”
Son of the Earth, brave flinger of the seed,
Strider of furrows, copesmate of the morn,
Which, stirr’d with quickenings now of day unborn,
Approves the mystery of thy fruitful deed;
Thou, young in hope and old as man’s first need,
Through all the hours that laugh, the hours that mourn,
Hold’st to one strenuous faith, by time unworn,
Sure of the miracle—that the clod will breed.
Dark is this upland, pallid still the sky,
And man, rude bondslave of the glebe, goes forth
To labour; serf, yet genius of the soil,
Great his abettors—a confederacy
Of mightiest Powers, old laws of heaven and earth,
Foresight and Faith, and ever-during Toil.
AT MULLION (CORNWALL)
Sunday
Where the blue dome is infinite,
And choral voices of the sea
Chaunt the high lauds, or meek, as now,
Intone their ancient litany;