POEMS OF THE HIGHER LIFE.

I.

THE DIVINE ELEMENT.

SONG.

FROM "PIPPA PASSES."

THE year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning 's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in His heaven

All's right with the world.

ROBERT BROWNING.

A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF SAINT

AUGUSTINE.

Long pored Saint Austin o'er the sacred page,
And doubt and darkness overspread his mind;
On God's mysterious being thought the Sage,
The Triple Person in one Godhead joined.
The more he thought, the harder did he find
To solve the various doubts which fast arose;
And as a ship, caught by imperious wind,

Tosses where chance its shattered body throws,

So tossed his troubled soul, and nowhere found

repose.

Heated and feverish, then he closed his tome,

And went to wander by the ocean-side, Where the cool breeze at evening loved to come, Murmuring responsive to the murmuring tide; And as Augustine o'er its margent wide Strayed, deeply pondering the puzzling theme, A little child before him he espied:

In earnest labor did the urchin seem,

Working with heart intent close by the sounding stream.

He looked, and saw the child a hole had scooped,
Shallow and narrow in the shining sand,
O'er which at work the laboring infant stooped,
Still pouring water in with busy hand.

The saint addressed the child in accents bland: "Fair boy," quoth he, “I pray what toil is thine? Let me its end and purpose understand."

The boy replied: “ An easy task is mine,

To sweep into this hole all the wide ocean's brine." "O foolish boy!" the saint exclaimed, " to hope

That the broad ocean in that hole should lie!” “O foolish saint!" exclaimed the boy; “ thy scope Is still more hopeless than the toil I ply, Who think'st to comprehend God's nature high In the small compass of thine human wit!

Sooner, Augustine, sooner far, shall I Confine the ocean in this tiny pit,

Than finite minds conceive God's nature infinite!"

ANONYMOUS.

MEDITATIONS OF A HINDU PRINCE.

ALL the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod,

Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God?

Westward across the ocean, and Northward across

the snow,

Do they all stand gazing, as ever, and what do the wisest know?

Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and

swarm

Like the wild bees heard in the tree-tops, or the gusts of a gathering storm;

In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen,

Yet we all say, "Whence is the message, and what may the wonders mean?"

A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer swings,

As they bow to a mystic symbol, or the figures of ancient kings;

And the incense rises ever, and rises the endless

cry

Of those who are heavy laden, and of cowards loth to die.

For the Destiny drives us together, like deer in a pass of the hills;

Above is the sky, and around us the sound of the shot that kills;

Pushed by a power we see not, and struck by a hand unknown.

We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips

to a stone.

The trees wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns hollow and grim,

And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in the twilight dim:

And we look to the sunlight falling afar on the mountain crest.—

Is there never a path runs upward to a refuge there and a rest?

The path, ah! who has shown it, and which is the faithful guide?

The haven, ah! who has known it? for steep is the mountain side,

Forever the shot strikes surely, and ever the wasted breath

Of the praying multitude rises, whose answer is only death.

Here are the tombs of my kinsfolk, the fruit of an ancient name,

Chiefs who were slain on the war-field, and women who died in flame;

They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they

are spirits who guard our race:

Ever I watch and worship; they sit with a marble face.

And the myriad idols round me, and the legion of muttering priests,

The revels and rites unholy, the dark unspeakable feasts!

What have they rung from the Silence? Hath

even a whisper come

Of the secret, Whence and Whither? Alas! for the gods are dumb.

Shall I list to the word of the English, who come from the uttermost sea?

"The Secret, hath it been told you, and what is your message to me?"

It is naught but the wide-world story how the earth and the heavens began,

How the gods are glad and angry, and a Deity

once was man.

I had thought, "Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell,

Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell,

They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown main—”

Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain.

Is life, then, a dream and delusion, and where shall the dreamer awake?

Is the world seen like shadows on water, and what if the mirror break?

Shall it pass as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered and gone

From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and lone?