With artist-gifts

to such a man as I

Who leave behind me living works indeed;
For, such a poem, such a painting lives.
What? dost thou verily trip upon a word,
Confound the accurate view of what joy is
(Caught somewhat clearer by my eyes than thine)
With feeling joy? confound the knowing how
And showing how to live (my faculty)

With actually living? - Otherwise

Where is the artist's vantage o'er the king?
Because in my great epos I display

How divers men young, strong, fair, wise, can act

Is this as though I acted? if I paint,

Carve the young Phoebus, am I therefore young?
Methinks I'm older that I bowed myself

The many years of pain that taught me art!
Indeed, to know is something, and to prove
How all this beauty might be enjoyed, is more :
But, knowing nought, to enjoy is something too.
Yon rower with the moulded muscles there
Lowering the sail, is nearer it than I.

I can write love-odes - thy fair slave's an ode.
I get to sing of love, when grown too gray
For being beloved: she turns to that young man
The muscles all a-ripple on his back.

I know the joy of kingship: well thou art king!

"But," sayest thou

(and I marvel, I repeat,

To find thee tripping on a mere word)" what

Thou writest, paintest, stays: that does not die:
Sappho survives, because we sing her songs,
And Eschylus, because we read his plays!"
Why, if they live still, let them come and take
Thy slave in my desnite
drink from thy cup
Speak in my place. Thou diest while I survive?
Say rather that my fate is deadlier still,

In this, that every day my sense of joy
Grows more acute, my soul (intensified

In power and insight) more enlarged, more keen ;
While every day my hairs fall more and more,
My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase
The horror quickening still from year to year,
The consummation coming past escape

When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy -
When all my works wherein I prove my worth,
Being present stíll to mock me in men's mouths,
Alive still, in the phrase of such as thou,
I, I, the feeling, thinking, acting man,
The man who loved his life so over much,
Shall sleep in my urn. It is so horrible,
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus,
Unlimited in capability

For joy, as this is in desire for joy,

To seek which, the joy-hunger forces us.
That, stung by straitness of our life, made strait
On purpose to make sweet the life at large
Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death

We burst there as the worm into the fly,

Who, while a worm still, wants his wings. But, no

Zeus has not yet revealed it; and, alas!

He must have done so

were it possible !

Live long and happy, and in that thought die, Glad for what was. Farewell. And for the rest, I cannot tell thy messenger aright

Where to deliver what he bears of thine

To one called Paulus we have heard his fame
Indeed, if Christus be not one with him-
I know not, nor am troubled much to know.
Thou canst not think a mere barbarian Jew,
As Paulus proves to be, one circumcised,
Hath access to a secret shut from us?
Thou wrongest our philosophy, O king,
In stooping to inquire of such an one,
As if his answer could impose at all.

He writeth, doth he? well, and he may write.

Oh, the Jew findeth scholars! certain slaves

Who touched on this same isle, preached him and Ch

And (as I gathered from a bystander)

Their doctrines could be held by no sane man.

THE TWINS.

“Give” and “It-shall-be-given-unto-you.”

1.

GRAND rough old Martin Luther

Bloomed fables flowers on furze,

The better the uncouther:

Do roses stick like burrs ?

2.

A beggar asked an alms

One day at an abbey-door,

Said Luther; but, seized with qualms, The Abbot replied, "We're poor!"

3.

Poor, who had plenty once,

"When gifts fell thick as rain :

"But they give us nought, for the nonce, "And how should we give again?"

4.

Then the beggar, "See your sins! "Of old, unless I err,

"Ye had brothers for inmates, twins.

"Date and Dabitur."

5.

"While Date was in good case

"Dabitur flourished too:

"For Dabitur's lenten face,

"No wonder if Date rue."

6.

“Would ye retrieve the one?

"Try and make plump the other! "When Date's penance is done, "Dabitur helps his brother."

7.

"Only, beware relapse!"

The Abbot hung his head. This beggar might be, perhaps, An angel, Luther said.