_December 23, 1879._

I.

A thousand houses of poesy stand around me everywhere; They fill the earth and they fill my thought, they are in and above the air; But to-night they have shut their doors, they have shut their shining windows fair, And I am left in a desert world, with an aching as if of care.

II.

Cannot I break some little nut and get at the poetry in it? Cannot I break the shining egg of some all but hatched heavenly linnet? Cannot I find some beauty-worm, and its moony cocoon-silk spin it? Cannot I find my all but lost day in the rich content of a minute?

III.

I will sit me down, all aching and tired, in the midst of this never-unclosing Of door or window that makes it look as if truth herself were dozing; I will sit me down and make me a tent, call it poetizing or prosing, Of what may be lying within my reach, things at my poor disposing!

IV.

Now what is nearest?--My conscious self. Here I sit quiet and say: "Lo, I myself am already a house of poetry solemn and gay! But, alas, the windows are shut, all shut: 'tis a cold and foggy day, And I have not now the light to see what is in me the same alway!"

V.

Nay, rather I'll say: "I am a nut in the hard and frozen ground; Above is the damp and frozen air, the cold blue sky all round; And the power of a leafy and branchy tree is in me crushed and bound Till the summer come and set it free from the grave-clothes in which it is wound!"

VI.

But I bethink me of something better!--something better, yea best! "I am lying a voiceless, featherless thing in God's own perfect nest; And the voice and the song are growing within me, slowly lifting my breast; And his wide night-wings are closed about me, for his sun is down in the west!"

VII.

Doors and windows, tents and grave-clothes, winters and eggs and seeds, Ye shall all be opened and broken and torn; ye are but to serve my needs! On the will of the Father all lovely things are strung like a string of beads For his heart to give the obedient child that the will of the father heeds.

SONG-PRAYER: AFTER KING DAVID.

I shall be satisfied With the seeing of thy face. When I awake, wide-eyed, I shall be satisfied With what this life did hide, The one supernal grace! I shall be satisfied With the seeing of thy face.