God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice,

For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His

voice.

Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool; For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool;

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man

cannot see ;

But if we could see and hear, this Vision-were it not

He ?

204

FLOWER in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies ;—
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

LUCRETIUS.

LUCILIA, wedded to Lucretius, found

Her master cold; for when the morning flush

Of passion and the first embrace had died
Between them, tho' he loved her none the less,

Yet often when the woman heard his foot
Return from pacings in the field, and ran
To greet him with a kiss, the master took
Small notice, or austerely, for-his mind
Half buried in some weightier argument,
Or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise

And long roll of the Hexameter-he past

To turn and ponder those three hundred scrolls

Left by the Teacher whom he held divine.

She brook'd it not; but wrathful, petulant,

Dreaming some rival, sought and found a witch

Who brew'd the philtre which had power, they said, To lead an errant passion home again.

And this, at times, she mingled with his drink,

And this destroy'd him; for the wicked broth
Confused the chemio labour of the blood,

And tickling the brute brain within the man's
Made havock among those tender cells, and check'd
His power to shape: he loath'd himself; and once
After a tempest woke upon a morn

That mock'd him with returning calm, and cried;

'Storm in the night! for thrice I heard the rain Rushing; and once the flash of a thunderboltMethought I never saw so fierce a fork

Struck out the streaming mountain-side, and show'd

A riotous confluence of watercourses

Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it,

Where all but yester-eve was dusty-dry.

'Storm, and what dreams, yo holy Gods, what

dreams!

For thrice I waken'd after dreams. Porchance

Wo do but recollect the droams that come

Just cre the waking: terrible! for it seem'd
A void was made in Nature; all her bonds
Crack'd; and I saw the flaring atom-streams

And torrents of her myriad universe,
Ruining along the illimitable inane,

Fly on to clash together again, and make

Another and another frame of things

For ever: that was mine, my dream, I knew it .......

Of and belonging to me, as the dog