Cry down the past, not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people
well,

And loathed to see them overtaxed; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim earl, who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax
Upon his town, and all the mothers brought
Their children, clamoring, "If we pay, we
starve!"

She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode

About the hall, among his dogs, alone,

His beard a foot before him, and his hair
A yard behind. She told him of their tears,
And prayed him, "If they pay this tax, they
starve."

Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,
"You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these?"-"But I would die," said
she.

He laughed, and swore by Peter and by Paul:
Then filliped at the diamond in her ear;
"Oh, ay, ay, ay, you talk!"-" Alas!" she said,
"But prove me what it is I would not do."
And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand,
He answered, "Ride you naked through the
town,

And I repeal it;" and nodding, as in scorn,
He parted, with great strides among his dogs.
So left alone, the passions of her mind,
As winds from all the compass shift and blow,
Made war upon each other for an hour,
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people: therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the
street,

No eye look down, she passing; but that all Should keep within, door shut, and window barred.

Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim earl's gift; but ever at a breath,
She lingered, looking like a summer moon
Half-dipped in cloud; anon she shook her
head,

And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reached
The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapped
In purple blazoned with armorial gold.

Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listened round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.
The little wide-mouthed heads upon the spout
Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur
Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's foot-fall
shot

Light horrors through her pulses: the blind walls

Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she
Not less through all bore up, till, last, she saw
The white-flowered elder-thicket from the field
Gleam through the Gothic archways in the
wall.

Then she rode back, clothed on with chas tity:

And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,
The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little auger-hole in fear,
Peeped-but his eyes, before they had their
will,

Were shrivelled into darkness in his head,
And dropped before him. So the Powers, who
wait

On noble deeds, cancelled a sense misused; And she, that knew not, passed: and all at once,

With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon

Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers,

One after one: but even then she gained
Her bower whence reissuing, robed and
crowned,

To meet her lord, she took the tax away,
And built herself an everlasting name.

THE TWO VOICES.

A STILL Small voice spake unto me: "Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?"

Then to the still small voice I said: "Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made."

To which the voice would urge reply: "To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie.

"An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail

Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

"He dried his wings; like gauze they grew: Through crofts and pastures wet with dew A living flash of light he flew."

I said: "When first the world began,
Young Nature through five cycles ran,
And in the sixth she moulded man.

"She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast."

Thereto the silent voice replied:
"Self-blinded ave you by your pride;
Look up through night; the world is wide,

"This truth within thy mind rehearse,
That in a boundless universe
Is boundless better, boundless worse,

"Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres ? "

It spake, moreover, in my mind: "Though thou wert scattered to the wind, Yet is there plenty of the kind."

Then did my response clearer fall: "No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all.”

To which he answered scoffingly: "Good soul! suppose I grant it thee, Who'll weep for thy deficiency?

"Or will one beam be less intense, When thy peculiar difference

Is cancelled in the world of sense?"

I would have said, "Thou canst not know,"
But my full heart, that worked below,
Rained through my sight its overflow.

Again the voice spake unto me:
"Thou art so steeped in misery,
Surely 'twere better not to be.

"Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, Nor any train of reason keep:

Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep."

I said: "The years with change advance;
If I make dark my countenance,
I shut my life from happier chance.

"Some turn this sickness yet might take, Even yet." But he: "What drug can make A withered palsy cease to shake?"

I wept: "Though I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;

"And men, through novel spheres of thought
Still moving after truth long sought,
Will learn new things when I am not."

"Yet," said the secret voice, some time,
Sooner or later, will gray prime
Make thy grass hoar with early rime.

"Not less swift souls that yearn for light,
Rapt after heaven's starry flight,

Would sweep the tracts of day and night.

"At least not rotting like a weed, But, having sown some generous seed, Fruitful of further thought and deed,

"To pass, when Life her light withdraws, Not void of righteous self-applause, Nor in a merely selfish cause

"In some good cause, not in mine own, To perish, wept for, honored, known, And like a warrior overthrown;

"Whose eyes are dim with glorious tears, When, soiled with noble dust, he hears His country's war-song thrill his ears:

"Then dying of a mortal stroke, What time the foeman's line is broke, And all the war is rolled in smoke."

"Yes!" said the voice, "thy dream was good, While thou abodest in the bud.

It was the stirring of the blood.

"If Nature put not forth her power About the opening of the flower, Who is it that could live an hour?

"Then comes the check, the change, the fall. Pain rises up, old pleasures pall. There is one remedy for all.

"Yet hadst thou, through enduring pain, Linked month to mouth with such a chain Of knitted purport, all were vain.

"Thou hadst not between death and birth Dissolved the riddle of the earth. So were thy labor little-worth.

"That men with knowledge merely played, I told thee-hardly nigher made, Though scaling slow from grade to grade; "Much less this dreamer, deaf and blind, Named man, may hope some truth to find, That bears relation to the mind.

"For every worm beneath the moon Draws different threads, and late and soon Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.

"Cry, faint not: either Truth is born
Beyond the polar gleam forlorn,
Or in the gateways of the morn.

"Cry, faint not, climb: the summits slope Beyond the farthest flights of hope, Wrapped in dense cloud from base to cope.

"Sometimes a little corner shines, As over rainy mist inclines

A gleaming crag with belts of pines.

"I will go forward, sayest thou, I shall not fail to find her now. Look up, the fold is on her brow.

"If straight thy track, or if oblique,

Thou know'st not. Shadows thou dost strike, Embracing cloud, Ixion-like;

"And owning but a little more
Than beasts, abidest lame and poor,
Calling thyself a little lower

"Than angels. Cease to wail and brawl! Why inch by inch to darkness crawl? There is one remedy for all."

O dull, one-sided voice," said I, "Wilt thou make everything a lie, To flatter me that I may die? "I know that age to age succeeds, Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds, A dust of systems and of creeds.

"I cannot hide that some have striven, Achieving calm, to whom was given The joy that mixes man with heaven: "Who, rowing hard against the stream, Saw distant gates of Eden gleam, And did not dream it was a dream;

"His palms are folded on his breast: There is no other thing expressed But long disquiet merged in rest.

"His lips are very mild and meek: Though one should smite him on the cheek, And on the mouth, he will not speak.

"His little daughter, whose sweet face He kissed, taking his last embrace, Becomes dishonor to her race

"His sons grow up that bear his name, Some grow to honor, some to shameBut he is chill to praise or blame.

"He will not hear the north-wind rave, Nor, moaning, household shelter crave From winter rains that beat his grave.

"High up the vapors fold and swim; About him broods the twilight dim: The place he knew forgetteth him."

"If all be dark, vague voice," I said,

"He knows a baseness in his blood At such strange war with something good, He may not do the thing he would. "Heaven openes inward, chasms yawn, Vast images in glimmering dawn, Half-shown, are broken and withdrawn.

"Ah! sure within him and without, Could his dark wisdom find it out, There must be answer to his doubt.

"But thou canst answer not again. With thine own weapon art thou slain, Or thou wilt answer but in vain.

"The doubt would rest, I dare not solve. In the same circle we revolve. Assurance only breeds resolve."

As when a billow, blown against,

Falls back, the voice with which I fenced A little ceased, but recommenced:

Nor canst thou show the dead are dead.

"The sap dries up: the plant declines. A deeper tale my heart divines. Know I not Death? the outward signs? "I found him when my years were few; A shadow on the graves I knew, And darkness in the village yew.

"From grave to grave the shadow crept: In her still place the morning wept: Touched by his feet the daisy slept. "The simple senses crowned his head: 'Omega! thou art Lord,' they said, 'We find no motion in the dead.'

“Why, if man rot in dreamless ease, Should that plain fact, as taught by these, Not make him sure that he shall cease?

"Who forged that other influence, That heat of inward evidence,

By which he doubts against the sense?

"He owns the fatal gift of eyes,
That read his spirit blindly wise,
Not simple as a thing that dies.

"Here sits he shaping wings to fly:
His heart forebodes a mystery:
He names the name Eternity.

"That type of perfect in his mind
In Nature can he nowhere find.
He sows himself on every wind.

"He seems to hear a heavenly Friend, And through thick veils to apprehend A labor working to an end.

"The end and the beginning vex His reason: many things perplex,

With motions, checks, and counter-checks.

A merry boy in sun and shade?

"A merry boy they called him then,
He sat upon the knees of men
In days that never come again.
"Before the little ducts began
To feed thy bones with lime, and ran

Their course, till thou wert also man:

"Who took a wife, who reared his race, Whose wrinkles gathered on his face, Whose troubles number with his days:

"A life of nothings, nothing-worth, From that first nothing ere his birth To that last nothing under earth!"

"These words," I said, "are like the rest, No certain clearness, but at best A vague suspicion of the breast:

"But if I grant, thou might'st defend The thesis which thy words intendThat to begin implies to end;

"Yet how should I for certain hold, Because my memory is so cold, That I first was in human mould?

"I cannot make this matter plain, But I would shoot, howe'er in vain, A random arrow from the brain.

"It may be that no life is found, Which only to one engine bound Falls off, but cycles always round.

"As old mythologies relate, Some draught of Lethe might await The slipping through from state to state.

"As here we find in trances, men Forget the dream that happens then, Until they fall in trance again.

On to God's house the people pressed: Passing the place where each must rest, Each entered like a welcome guest.

One walked between his wife and child,
With measured footfall firm and mild,
And now and then he gravely smiled.

The prudent partner of his blood
Leaned on him, faithful, gentle, good,
Wearing the rose of womanhood.
And in their double love secure,
The little maiden walked demure,
Pacing with downward eyelids pure.

These three made unity so sweet,
My frozen heart began to beat,
Remembering its ancient heat.

I blessed them, and they wandered on:
I spoke, but answer came there none:
The dull and bitter voice was gone.