Part 8 (2/2)

As one who cleaves the circ.u.mambient air Seeking in azure what it lacks in s.p.a.ce, And sees a young and finely chiselled face Filled with foretastes of wisdom yet more rare; Touching and yet untouched--unmeasured grace!

A breathing credo and a living prayer-- Yet of the earth, still earthy; debonair The while in heaven it seeketh for a place.

So thy dear eyes and thy kind lips but say-- Ere from his cerements Timon seems to flit: ”What of the reaper grim with sickle keen?”

And then the sunlight ushers in new day And for our tasks our bodies seem more fit-- ”Might of the night, unfleeing, sight unseen.”

_Charles Battell Loomis_.

ALONE

Alone! Alone!

I sit in the solitudes of the moonshades, Soul-hungering in the moonshade solitudes sit I-- My heart-lifts beaten down in the wild wind-path.

Oppressed, and scourged and beaten down are my heart-lifts.

I fix my gaze on the eye-star, and the eye-star flings its dart upon me.

I wonder why my soul is lost in wonder why I am, And why the eye-star mocks me, Why the wild wind beats down my heart-lifts; Why I am stricken here in the moonshade solitudes.

Oh! why am I what I am, And why am I anything?

Am I not as wild as the wind and more crazy?

Why do I sit in the moonshade, while the eye-star mocks me while I ask what I am?

Why? Why?

_Anonymous_.

LINES BY A MEDIUM

I might not, if I could; I should not, if I might; Yet if I should I would, And, shoulding, I should quite!

I must not, yet I may; I can, and still I must; But ah! I cannot--nay, To must I may not, just!

I shall, although I will, But be it understood, If I may, can, shall--still I might, could, would, or should!

_Anonymous_.

TRANSCENDENTALISM

It is told, in Buddhi-theosophic schools, There are rules, By observing which, when mundane labor irks One can simulate quiescence By a timely evanescence From his Active Mortal Essence, (Or his Works.)

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