Then fixed His Church a deepening gaze Upon His Saints. With Him they sate, And, burning in that Godhead's blaze,

They seemed that Manhood to dilate.

His were they of His likeness each
Had grace some fragment to present,
And nearer brought to mortal reach

Of Him some line or lineament.

Fest. S. S. Trinitatis.

XII.

FALL back, all worlds, into the abyss,
That man may contemplate once more
That which He ever was Who is:

The Eternal Essence we adore.

Angelic hierarchies! recede

Beyond extinct creation's shade!

What were ye at the first? Decreed:

Decreed, not fashioned; thought, not made!

Like wind the untold Millenniums passed.
Sole-throned He sat; yet not alone:
Godhead in Godhead still was glassed ;-

The Spirit was breathed from Sire and Son.

Prime Virgin, separate and sealed;

Nor less of social love the root; Dimly in lowliest shapes revealed; Entire in every Attribute;

Thou liv'st in all things, and around; To Thee external is there nought; Thou of the boundless art the bound; And still Creation is Thy Thought.

In vain, O God, our wings we spread; So distant art Thou- yet so nigh. Remains but this, when all is said,

For Thee to live; in Thee to die.

H

XIII.

WHERE is the crocus now, that first,
When earth was dark and heaven was grey,

A prothalamion flash, up-burst?

Ah, then we deemed not of the May!

The clear stream stagnates in its course;
Narcissus droops in pallid gloom;

Far off the hills of golden gorse

A dusk Saturnian face assume.

The seeded dandelion dim

Casts loose its air-globe on the breeze;
Along the grass the swallows skim;
The cattle couch among the trees.

Yet ever lordlier loveliness

Succeeds to that which slips our hold: The thorn assumes her snowy dress; Laburnum bowers their robes of gold.

Down waves successive of the year
We drop; but drop once more to rise,
With ampler view, as on we steer,

Of lovelier lights and loftier skies.

"Ad Nives."

XIV.

BEFORE the morn began to break

The bright One bent above that pair Whose childless vows aspired to take The mother of their Lord for heir.

'Twas August: even in midnight shade
The roofs were hot, and hot the street: -
"Build me a fane," the vision said,

"Where first your eyes the snow shall meet.”

With snow the Esquiline was strewn

At morn!-Fair Legend! who but thinks Of thee, when first the breezes blown From summer Alp to Alp he drinks?

He stands: he hears the torrents dash:
Slowly the vapours break; and lo!
Through chasms of endless azure flash
The peaks of everlasting snow.

* Santa Maria Maggiore, on the Esquiline, at Rome.