[INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.]
Boom, boom, ye mellow joy-bells, like the sea!
Peace, peace on earth, good-will! (and all hell gapes!)—
Yet immemorial sadness ever drapes
The upward way of far humanity:
All prone through dark and strait Gethsemane
Thou cam'st in blood, a cluster of trod grapes!—
O bruisëd race, whose wail so surgeful shapes
Melodious sorrow's awful threnody!
Late, late, love's Areopagus unfurled
Right-reason's sun-glad banner from the height,
While rage the Furies in their cave beneath!
Hush, hush, it is the daybreak of the world!
Man's warring sky is passing out of night,
And stark black demons flit with sword in sheath.
[THE HOUSE OF GOD.]
[G. A. G.]
No finished castle is the house of God.
The mind of Christ, supremest Architect,
Man's puny apprehension doth correct
From age to age, and turns afresh the sod.
The vast historic temple now is trod
'Neath loftier roof and heavenlier aspéct;
New light, new need, revealed, each ripe defect
Goes down beneath man's feet diviner shod.
Alas, humanity no more can grasp
Of thought of the divine Artificer,
Than holds of ocean crinkled shell on beach!
Yet His unfolding plan in vital clasp
Possess, O human soul, amid the stir
Of speeding worlds Love's flying-goal to reach!