James Lionel Michael

`Through Pleasant Paths'

Through pleasant paths, through dainty ways,
   Love leads my feet;
Where beauty shines with living rays,
   Soft, gentle, sweet;
The placid heart at random strays,
And sings, and smiles, and laughs and plays,
And gathers from the summer days
   Their light and heat,
That in its chambers burn and blaze
   And beam and beat.

I throw myself among the ferns
   Under the shade,
And watch the summer sun that burns
   On dell and glade;
To thee, my dear, my fancy turns,
In thee its Paradise discerns,
For thee it sighs, for thee it yearns,
   My chosen maid;
And that still depth of passion learns
   Which cannot fade.

The wind that whispers in the night,
   Subtle and free,
The gorgeous noonday's blinding light,
   On hill and tree,
All lovely things that meet my sight,
All shifting lovelinesses bright,
Speak to my heart with calm delight,
   Seeming to be
Cloth'd with enchantment, robed in white,
   To sing of thee.

The ways of life are hard and cold
   To one alone;
Bitter the strife for place and gold —
   We weep and groan:
But when love warms the heart grows bold;
And when our arms the prize enfold,
Dearest! the heart can hardly hold
   The bliss unknown,
Unspoken, never to be told —
   My own, my own!

Personality

      "Death is to us change, not consummation."
                               Heart of Midlothian.

A change! no, surely, not a change,
 The change must be before we die;
Death may confer a wider range,
 From pole to pole, from sea to sky,
It cannot make me new or strange
 To mine own Personality!

For what am I? — this mortal flesh,
 These shrinking nerves, this feeble frame,
For ever racked with ailments fresh
 And scarce from day to day the same —
A fly within the spider's mesh,
 A moth that plays around the flame!

THIS is not I — within such coil
 The immortal spirit rests awhile:
When this shall lie beneath the soil,
 Which its mere mortal parts defile,
THAT shall for ever live and foil
 Mortality, and pain, and guile.

Whatever Time may make of me
 Eternity must see me still
Clear from the dross of earth, and free
 From every stain of every ill;
Yet still, where-e'er — what-e'er I be,
 Time's work Eternity must fill.

When all the worlds have ceased to roll,
 When the long light has ceased to quiver
When we have reached our final goal
 And stand beside the Living River,
This vital spark — this loving soul,
 Must last for ever and for ever.

To choose what I must be is mine,
 Mine in these few and fleeting days,
I may be if I will, divine,
 Standing before God's throne in praise, —
Through all Eternity to shine
 In yonder Heaven's sapphire blaze.

Father, the soul that counts it gain
 To love Thee and Thy law on earth,
Unchanged but free from mortal stain,
 Increased in knowledge and in worth,
And purified from this world's pain,
 Shall find through Thee a second birth.

A change! no surely not a change!
 The change must be before we die;
Death may confer a wider range
 From world to world, from sky to sky,
It cannot make me new or strange
 To mine own Personality!