And in appropriate dust be hurled
  That dull, punctilious god, whom they
That call their tiny clan the world,
  Serve and obsequiously obey: 
Who con their ritual of Routine,
  With minds to one dead likeness blent,
And never ev’n in dreams have seen
  The things that are more excellent.

To dress, to call, to dine, to break
  No canon of the social code,
The little laws that lacqueys make,
  The futile decalogue of Mode,—­
How many a soul for these things lives,
  With pious passion, grave intent! 
While Nature careless-handed gives
  The things that are more excellent.

To hug the wealth ye cannot use,
  And lack the riches all may gain,—­
O blind and wanting wit to choose,
  Who house the chaff and burn the grain! 
And still doth life with starry towers
  Lure to the bright, divine ascent!—­
Be yours the things ye would:  be ours
  The things that are more excellent.

The grace of friendship—­mind and heart
  Linked with their fellow heart and mind;
The gains of science, gifts of art;
  The sense of oneness with our kind;
The thirst to know and understand—­
  A large and liberal discontent: 
These are the goods in life’s rich hand,
  The things that are more excellent.

In faultless rhythm the ocean rolls,
  A rapturous silence thrills the skies;
And on this earth are lovely souls,
  That softly look with aidful eyes. 
Though dark, O God, Thy course and track,
  I think Thou must at least have meant
That nought which lives should wholly lack
  The things that are more excellent.

BEAUTY’S METEMPSYCHOSIS

  That beauty such as thine
    Can die indeed,
Were ordinance too wantonly malign: 
No wit may reconcile so cold a creed
  With beauty such as thine.

  From wave and star and flower
    Some effluence rare
Was lent thee, a divine but transient dower: 
Thou yield’st it back from eyes and lips and hair
  To wave and star and flower.

  Shouldst thou to-morrow die,
    Thou still shalt be
Found in the rose and met in all the sky: 
And from the ocean’s heart shalt sing to me,
  Shouldst thou to-morrow die.

ENGLAND MY MOTHER

I

England my mother, Wardress of waters.  Builder of peoples, Maker of men,—­

Hast thou yet leisure
Left for the muses? 
Heed’st thou the songsmith
  Forging the rhyme?

Deafened with tumults,
How canst thou hearken? 
Strident is faction,
  Demos is loud.

Lazarus, hungry,
Menaces Dives;
Labour the giant
  Chafes in his hold.

Yet do the songsmiths
Quit not their forges;
Still on life’s anvil
  Forge they the rhyme.