Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice,

For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice.

Law is God, say some; no God at all, says the fool,

For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool;

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;

But if we could see and hear, this Vision -were it not He?

FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

SONG FROM MERLIN AND VIVIEN

In love, if love be love, if love be ours Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers:

Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.

It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute,

And ever widening slowly silence all.

The little rift within the lover's lute, Or little pitted speck in garner'd fruit, That rotting inward slowly moulders all.

Is it not worth the keeping; let it go: But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no And trust me not at all or all in all.

Nay-for it's kind of you, madam, to sit by an old dying wife.

But say nothing hard of my boy, I have only an hour of life.

I kiss'd my boy in the prison, before he went out to die.

"They dared me to do it," he said, and he never has told me a lie. I whipt him for robbing an orchard once when he was but a child

"The farmer dared me to do it," he said;

he was always so wildAnd idle and couldn't be idle-my Willy he never could rest. The King should have made him a soldier, he would have been one of his best.

They hang'd him in chains for a show

we had always borne a good nameTo be hang'd for a thief-and then put

away-isn't that enough shame? Dust to dust-low down-let us hide! but they set him so high

That all the ships of the world could

stare at him, passing by.

God 'ill pardon the hell-black raven and horrible fowls of the air,

39

My baby, the bones that had suck'd me, the bones that had laughed and had cried

Theirs? O, no! they are mine-not theirs they had moved in my side.

XII

Do you think I was scared by the bones? I kiss'd 'em, I buried 'em all—

by the churchyard wall.

My Willy 'ill rise up whole when the trumpet of judgment 'ill sound, But I charge you never to say that I laid him in holy ground.

And read me a Bible verse of the Lord's

good will toward men

"Full of compassion and mercy, the Lord" let me hear it again;

"Full of compassion and mercy-long suffering." Yes, oh, yes! For the lawyer is born but to murderthe Saviour lives but to bless. He'll never put on the black cap except for the worst of the worst, And the first may be last-I have heard it in church-and the last may be first.

Suffering O long suffering-yes, as the Lord must know,

Year after year in the mist and the wind and the shower and the snow.

XI

Flesh of my flesh was gone, but bone of my bone was left

I stole them all from the lawyers-and you will you call it a theft?

XIV

Heard, have you? what? they have told you he never repented his sin. How do they know it? are they his mother? are you of his kin?

in the face f

Madam, I beg your pardon! I think that you mean to be kind,

But I cannot hear what you say for my Willy's voice in the wind

The snow and the sky so bright—he used but to call in the dark,

And he calls to me now from the church

and not from the gibbet-for hark! Nay you can hear it yourself-it is coming-shaking the walls-

Willy-the moon's in a cloud-Goodnight. I am going. He calls.

CROSSING THE BAR 4°

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

1 The Calvinistic doctrine 2 eternal damnation

that God elects a few

to be saved.

And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea.

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing: