THE HERMIT.

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II.

Mine eyes are heavy with watching,
My tongue for speech doth thirst;

If only the veriest dog of a man
Would break this void accurst!

The deer come grazing before me,

As though a stone were I;

The hare with the scorn of a fear overthrown

Goes lightly glancing by.

The wood is busy with music,

The birds in chorus sing;

The adders creep out, and the toads come about,

As round a vanquished king.

A vision haunts me, and haunts me,

A dream of tender eyes;

I call her my saint, and I kneel at her shrine,

But earthly thoughts will rise.

"Tis not Madonna, the Jewess,

Who died so long ago;

But Mary, the living, that smiles from my wall,—

The painter wrought it so.

1

'Tis not the enemy, Satan,

My gargoyle, carved in wood;

But Brother Anselmo, the cunning, the base,
Who all my deeds withstood.

"Tis "Oh for a change in the spectres!"

My reeling soul doth sigh.

Ho! churl of a forester, welcome, my friend!
God sent you passing by.

III.

God, it is just, though 'tis bitter,
That I should come to lie,

Lonely and dry as a severed branch,
Here in my wood to die.

Yet hast Thou shown me Thy mercy :

Out of the herbs obscure

Many a simple my hands have culled,

Many an ill to cure.

Now, by so much as I served them,

Count I my brethren kin;

Now, by so much as they loved me, Lord,
Let me Thy pardon win.

THE HERMIT.

117

Evil my life, and an error,

Based on a pride so blind,

Deeming that man, of Thy works alone,
Flourished without his kind.

Now, but for thee, O my Father,

I had been like the king

Who as a brute with the brutes did graze,

Sunk to a meaner thing.

Saved by a hand's-breadth from madness—
Saved, but all useless now,-

Let me be warning who may not guide,
Publish my latest vow.

All of my life that remaineth,

Though but a breath it be,

Take it, my brothers, forsaken, lost,

Take it, as all of me.

BROTHERS.

I

STAND outside the Abbey where we stood
Singing our parts.

'Twas early morning, and our life was good,
So young our hearts!

Lonely upon the wall one shadow falls
Mine, all alone;

Broken, my voice, all inharmonious, calls

Its other tone.

The city crowd goes past me, rushing by,
With far-off roar ;

Beside my feet the quiet gravestones lie,
Unseen before.

The windows, all a glory from within,
Are dull without;

A vision as of death in pain and sin
Doth glide about.

BROTHERS.

Arthur, I left you robed in white, and gay,
A chorister.

Silent I find you,—I so old, and grey,
And sinister.

Which is my brother? Arthur, dead, a child?
What kin are we?

Or the bright angel, dwelling undefiled,

More strange is he.

No friend least known, no foe most held in fear,
Could scare me so

As could my brother, held familiar, dear,

So long ago.

Yet as I love him still, though grown so great,
It well may be

His love doth bridge the gulf between our state,
And reach to me.

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