V.

The King bent low, with hand on brow,

He stay'd his arms upon his knee:

"O wife, what use to answer now?

For now the Priest has judged for me."

The King was shaken with holy fear;

"The Gods," he said, "would have chosen

well;

Yet both are near, and both are dear,

And which the dearest I cannot tell!"

But the Priest was happy,

His victim won :

We have his dearest,

His only son!"

VI.

The rites prepared, the victim bared,

The knife uprising toward the blow, To the altar-stone she sprang alone,

"Me, not my darling, no!"

He caught her away with a sudden cry;

Suddenly from him brake his wife,

And shrieking "I am his dearest, I

I am his dearest!" rush'd on the knife.

And the Priest was happy,

"O, Father Odin,

We give you a life.

Which was his nearest ?

Who was his dearest ?

The Gods have answer'd;

We give them the wife!"

WAGES.

LORY of warrior, glory of orator,

glory of song,

Paid with a voice flying by to be

lost on an endless sea

Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the

wrong

Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of

glory she:

Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.

The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue

be dust,

Would she have heart to endure for the life of

the worm and the fly?

She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats

of the just,

To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a

summer sky:

Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.

THE HIGHER PANTHEISM.

HE sun,

the moon, the stars, the seas,

the hills and the plains

Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of

Him who reigns?

Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which

He seems ?

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and

limb,

Are they not sign and symbol of thy division

from Him?