23 NOVEMBER 1907, Page 19

POETRY.

HEIMWEH.

HAVE you not heard of the land where Beauty and Love are eternal,

Where from the fullness of life nothing is ever withdrawn, Save that a clear pure stream, with imperceptible current, Glides through the Lake of Peace into the Ocean of Joy ?

Here, on this bloodstain'd Earth, that land has never existed: Here is no lake of peace, here is no ocean of joy ; And if the rivers flow, they move to their own destruction, Lured into stormy seas foul with the wrecks of the Past.

Not in a group like ours, one sun with his handful of planets, Riding obscurely alone, lost in a corner of Space, Nor in such nobler worlds as the gorgeous suns of Orion, Nor in those uttermost orbs ne'er to be noted or known ; Not in all these is the land where Beauty and Love are eternal,

Where in a dream of delight spirits united abide.

For there is never an orb but is moulded of changeable matter, Shaped by the lapse of time, bonnd•to its own little curve,

Fuss;la into form after form, one mode succeeding another, But, whatsoever it be, dead as the heart of a stone.

These cannot yield us our quest, the limitless life that we long for, These cannot offer a place meet for the souls of the just: Nay, we may search with our eyes through the splendid expanse of the heavens, Roving from star to star, wistfully seeking a home ; But there is none to be found, nor can be, in such a Creation, Made but of tangible stuff, drifting like us to its doom.

Look to the light of God, the core of ultimate Being, Safe from the thraldom of sense, not to be touch'd with decay : There, only there, is the land where Beauty and Love are eternal; There is our haven of rest, there is the home of the soul.

ARTHUR MIINBY.