XVII

=Sonnet=

  Shall the hag Evil die with the child of Good,
  Or propagate again her loathed kind,
  Thronging the cells of the diseased mind,
  Hateful with hanging cheeks, a withered brood,
  Though hourly pastured on the salient blood? 
  Oh! that the wind which bloweth cold or heat
  Would shatter and o’erbear the brazen beat
  Of their broad vans, and in the solitude
  Of middle space confound them, and blow back
  Their wild cries down their cavernthroats, and slake
  With points of blastborne hail their heated eyne! 
  So their wan limbs no more might come between
  The moon and the moon’s reflex in the night;
  Nor blot with floating shades the solar light.

XVIII

=Sonnet=

  The palid thunderstricken sigh for gain,
  Down an ideal stream they ever float,
  And sailing on Pactolus in a boat,
  Drown soul and sense, while wistfully they strain
  Weak eyes upon the glistering sands that robe
  The understream.  The wise could he behold
  Cathedralled caverns of thick-ribbed gold
  And branching silvers of the central globe,
  Would marvel from so beautiful a sight
  How scorn and ruin, pain and hate could flow: 
  But Hatred in a gold cave sits below,
  Pleached with her hair, in mail of argent light
  Shot into gold, a snake her forehead clips
  And skins the colour from her trembling lips.

XIX

=Love=

  I

  Thou, from the first, unborn, undying love,
  Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near,
  Before the face of God didst breath and move,
  Though night and pain and ruin and death reign here. 
  Thou foldest, like a golden atmosphere,
  The very throne of the eternal God: 
  Passing through thee the edicts of his fear
  Are mellowed into music, borne abroad
  By the loud winds, though they uprend the sea,
  Even from his central deeps:  thine empery
  Is over all:  thou wilt not brook eclipse;
  Thou goest and returnest to His Lips
  Like lightning:  thou dost ever brood above
  The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love.

  II

  To know thee is all wisdom, and old age
  Is but to know thee:  dimly we behold thee
  Athwart the veils of evil which enfold thee
  We beat upon our aching hearts with rage;
  We cry for thee:  we deem the world thy tomb. 
  As dwellers in lone planets look upon
  The mighty disk of their majestic sun,
  Hallowed in awful chasms of wheeling gloom,
  Making their day dim, so we gaze on thee. 
  Come, thou of many crowns, white-robed love,
  Oh! rend the veil in twain:  all men adore thee;
  Heaven crieth after thee; earth waileth for thee: 
  Breathe on thy winged throne, and it shall move
  In music and in light o’er land and sea.