“ An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk : from head to tail

Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

“ He dried his wings: like gauze they grew : Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew A living flash of light he flew.”

I said, “When first the world began,
Young Nature thro' five cycles ran,
And in the sixth she moulded man.

“ She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest,

Dominion in the head and breast."

Thereto the silent voice replied ;
“Self-blinded are you by your pride :
Look up thro' night: the world is wide.

“ This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe

Is boundless better, boundless worse.

“ Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his

peers In yonder hundred million spheres?"

• It spake, moreover,

in
my

mind :
66 Tho' thou wert scattered to the wind,
Yet is there plenty of the kind."

Then did my response clearer fall : “No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all.”

To which he answer'd scoffingly ;
“Good soul! suppose I grant it thee,
Who'll weep for thy deficiency?

66 Or will one beam be less intense, When thy peculiar difference

Is cancell'd in the world of sense?

I would have said, “ Thou canst not know,”
But my full heart, that work'd below,
Rain'd thro' my sight its overflow.

Again the voice spake unto me : 5 Thou art so steep'd in misery, Surely 'twere better not to be.

“ Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, Nor any train of reason keep : Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep."

I said, “ The years with change advance :
If I make dark my countenance,
I shut my life from happier chance.

“ Some turn this sickness yet might take, Ev'n yet." But he: “What drug can make A wither'd palsy cease to shake ?"

I wept, “ Tho' I should die, I know

That all about the thorn will blow

In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;

“And men, thro' novel spheres of thought Still moving after truth long sought, Will learn new things when I am not.”

66 Yet," said the secret voice, some time,
Sooner or later, will gray prime
Make thy grass hoar with early rime.

- Not less swift souls that yearn for light,
Rapt after heaven's starry flight,
Would sweep the tracts of day and night.

“ Not less the bee would range her cells, The furzy prickle fire the dells, The foxglove cluster dappled bells."

I said that “ all the years invent;
Each month is various to present
The world with some development.

“ Were this not well, to bide mine hour, Tho' watching from a ruin'd tower How grows the day of human power?"

“ The highest-mounted mind," he said, “ Still sees the sacred morning spread The silent summit overhead.

“ Will thirty seasons render plain Those lonely lights that still remain, Just breaking over land and main ?