makes spring in the mind When sixty years are told; Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, And we are never old; Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow, And through the wild-piled snow-drift The warm rosebuds below. 

  

  

       THE SPHINX     

      The Sphinx is drowsy, Her wings are furled:      Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world.      "Who'll tell me my secret, The ages have kept?—      I awaited the seer While they slumbered and slept:—       "The fate of the man-child, The meaning of man; Known fruit of the unknown; Daedalian plan; Out of sleeping a waking, Out of waking a sleep; Life death overtaking; Deep underneath deep?       "Erect as a sunbeam, Upspringeth the palm; The elephant browses, Undaunted and calm; In beautiful motion The thrush plies his wings; Kind leaves of his covert, Your silence he sings.       "The waves, unashamèd, In difference sweet, Play glad with the breezes, Old playfellows meet; The journeying atoms, Primordial wholes, Firmly draw, firmly drive,        By their animate poles.       "Sea, earth, air, sound, silence. Plant, quadruped, bird, By one music enchanted, One deity stirred,—      Each the other adorning, Accompany still; Night veileth the morning, The vapor the hill.       "The babe by its mother Lies bathèd in joy; Glide its hours uncounted,—        The sun is its toy; Shines the peace of all being, Without cloud, in its eyes; And the sum of the world In soft miniature lies.       "But man crouches and blushes, Absconds and conceals; He creepeth and peepeth, He palters and steals; Infirm, melancholy, Jealous glancing around,      An oaf, an accomplice, He poisons the ground.       "Out spoke the great mother, Beholding his fear;—      At the sound of her accents Cold shuddered the sphere:—      'Who has drugged my boy's cup? Who has mixed my boy's bread? Who, with sadness and madness, Has turned my child's head?'"       I heard a poet answer Aloud and cheerfully,      'Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges Are pleasant songs to me. Deep love lieth under These pictures of time; They fade in the light of Their meaning sublime.       "The fiend that man harries Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon, Lit by rays from 

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