The wind, the sea, the budding rose,
He knew their spirit and their laws,
For beauty did to him disclose

Her essence and her inward cause.

And e'en whatever mystic hope
The chemist's brooding dream indulges,
The quaint queer spells, just out of scope,
Black tome or crucible divulges,

The stone transmuting lead to gold,

The draught which gives perpetual youth,

The necromance by wizards told,

In Gabriel's fancy pass'd for truth.

Accomplish'd with the double stores
Of lofty fiction, crystal fact,

With that train'd vision which explores,

And skill to put the sight in act;

With that high earnestness of soul

Which passes on from strength to strength,

And bends the world to its control,

Behold him furnish'd forth at length.

He did not sit as one forlorn,

To some wrong age untimely brought,
He seem'd to a sweet rhythm born,

And poems sprang from every thought;

He seem'd as tho' the secret shrines

Of nature were for him unveil'd,

Where form was wrought in faultless lines, And music spoke where language fail'd.

But man is not a rounded arc,
And culture only clears the way
By which we struggle thro' the dark
To regions of the perfect day.
So ever thro' the jewell'd hours,
In Gabriel's heart, a haunting strife
Was ripen'd with his ripening powers,
To wrest the meaning out of life.

He shrank before those awful words"Alone ye came, alone depart!"

And doubts which cut the life like swords

Were sheathed awhile in some fond heart,

And slept a momentary sleep,

Hush'd down like frighten'd infant's cry, But never yet was heart so deep

Could lull the soul's perpetual sigh.

He question'd of the passing breeze,
"What message to the world of men ?"
Its voice was lost amidst the trees,
And silence claim'd her own again;
While oft in watches of the night

His listening heart beat fast and strong,
In ardour to interpret right

The echoes of the starry song.

Not wrapp'd in selfish hope and fear,

He ask'd the oracle for all,

And Life, to whom this youth was dear,
Made answers to his trumpet call.
Each stammering syllable he caught,
She dared, possess'd of God, rehearse,
And with a poet's instinct wrought
Her utterance to prophetic verse.

HIS SINGING.

My Gabriel on the heavenly mount
Stood waiting for the promised fire,
With coolest lilies from the fount

Of thought he wreath'd his lifted lyre;
And when the heat fell down like dew,
And all the veil was backward roll'd,
The carven flowers bloom'd out anew,
Transfigured into burning gold.

Sometimes he sang the truths he saw,
In perfect and harmonious rhyme,
A white-robed priest of ancient law,
Interpreting the needs of Time ;-
And those who give their souls to art,
The scholars of a world-wide school,
Said, "Here is one of reverent heart,
Who does not scorn the lofty rule."

When Gabriel sat beneath the Cross,

Beside the cradle and the grave,

And heavenly gain in earthly loss
With simple music simply gave,
His tender words flew far and wide,
Caught up by peasant as by peer,
And men proclaim'd on every side,
"We truly have a poet here!"

But Gabriel, though he did not shun,
Might not within the Temple dwell,
His soul's great music, once begun,
Swell'd louder than the sweetest bell.
So, ever with a wider sweep,

He broke beyond the bounds of thought,
To realms where shadowy instincts keep
A rescued limit snatch'd from Nought.

Within these subtle dreams he dwelt, And sang in minors quaint and strange; A few fine hearts were his, which felt How true his note, how wide his range;