Spirituality

Hope smiled when your nativity was cast,
Children of Summer! Ye fresh Flowers that brave
What Summer here escapes not, the fierce wave,
And whole artillery of the western blast,
Battering the Temple's front, its long-drawn nave
Smiting, as if each moment were their last.
But ye, bright Flowers on frieze and architrave
Survive, and once again the Pile stands fast:
Calm as the Universe, from specular towers
Of heaven contemplated by Spirits pure
With mute astonishment, it stands sustained
Through every part in symmetry, to endure,
Unhurt, the assault of Time with all his hours,
As the supreme Artificer ordained.

I.

    Storms gather o'er thy path,
Christian! - the sullen, tempest-darkened sky
Grows lurid with the elemental wrath, -
    Say, whither wilt thou fly?

God is my Refuge! - let the tempests come,
They will but speed me sooner to my home!


II.

    Night lowers in sullen gloom,
Christian! - a long, dark night awaiteth thee,
Dreary as Egypt's night of fear and doom, -
    Where will thy hiding be?

God is my refuge! - in the dreary night
In Him I dwell, and have abundant light!


III.

    Thine is a lonely way,
Christian! - and dangers all thy path infest;
Pitfalls and snares crowd all thy doubtful way, -
    Where is thy place of rest?

God is my Refuge! - safe in Him I move,
And feel no...

I nothing did all yesterday
But listen to the singing rain
On roof and weeping window-pane,
And, 'whiles I'd watch the flying spray
And smoking breakers in the bay:
Nothing but this did I all day -

Save turn anon to trim the fire
With a new log, and mark it roar
And flame with yellow tongues for more
To feed its mystical desire.
No other comrades save these three,
The fire, the rain, and the wild sea,

All day from morn till night had I -
Yea! and the wind, with fitful cry,
Like a hound whining at the door.

Yet seemed it, as to sleep I turned,
Pausing a little while to pray,
That not mis-spent had been the day;
That I had somehow wisdom learned
From those wild waters in the bay,
And from the fire as it burned;
And that...

Sometimes at night, when I sit and write,
    I hear the strangest things, -
As my brain grows hot with burning thought,
    That struggles for form and wings,
I can hear the beat of my swift blood's feet,
    As it speeds with a rush and a whir
From heart to brain and back again,
    Like a race-horse under the spur.

With my soul's fine ear I listen and hear
    The tender Silence speak,
As it leans on the breast of Night to rest,
    And presses his dusky cheek.
And the darkness turns in its sleep, and yearns
    For something that is kin;
And I hear the hiss of a scorching kiss,
    As it folds and fondles Sin.

In its hurrying race through leagues of space,
    I can hear the Earth catch breath,
As it heaves and moans, and shudders and...

I mark the months in liveries dank and dry,
The noontides many-shaped and hued;
I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.

I view the evening bonfires of the sun
On hills where morning rains have hissed;
The eyeless countenance of the mist
Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.

I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,
The cauldrons of the sea in storm,
Have felt the earthquake's lifting arm,
And trodden where abysmal fires and snow-cones are.

I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,
The coming of eccentric orbs;
To mete the dust the sky absorbs,
To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.

I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive;
Assemblies meet, and throb,...

The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The plowboy is whooping- anon-anon:
There's joy in the mountains;
There's life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!

Vast and mysterious brother, ere was yet of me
    So much as men may poise upon a needle's end,
Still shook with laughter all this monstrous might of thee,
    And still with haughty crest it called the morning friend.

Thy latticed column jetted up the bright blue air,
    Tall as a mast it was, and stronger than a tower;
Three hundred winters had beheld thee mighty there,
    Before my little life had lived one little hour.

With rocky foot stern-set like iron in the land,
    With leafy rustling crest the morning sows with pearls,
Huge as a minster, half in heaven men saw thee stand,
    Thy rugged girth the waists of fifty Eastern girls.

Knotted and warted, slabbed and armoured like the hide
    Of tropic elephant; unstormable and steep
As some grim...

ART.


One is so fair, I turn to go,
As others go, its beckoning length;
Such paths can never lead to woe,
I say in eager, early strength.
What is the goal?
Visions of heaven, wake;
But the wind's whispers round me roll:
"For you, mistake!"


LOVE.


One leads beneath high oaks, and birds
Choose there their joyous revelry;
The sunbeams glint in golden herds,
The river mirrors silently.
Under these trees
My heart would bound or break;
Tell me what goal, resonant breeze?
"For you, mistake!"


CHARITY.


What is there left? The arid way,
The chilling height, whence all the world
Looks little, and each radiant day,
Like the soul's banner, flies unfurled.
May I stand here;
In ...

I saw an Eastern God to-day;
My comrades laughed; lest I betray
My secret thoughts, I mocked him too.
His many hands (he had no few,
This God of gifts and charity),
The marble race, that smiled on me,
I mocked, and said, “O God unthroned,
Lone exile from the faith you owned,
No priest to bring you sacrifice,
No censer with its breath of spice,
No land to mourn your funeral pyre.
O King, whose subjects felt your fire,
Now dead, now stone, without a slave,
Unfeared, unloved, you have no grave.
Poor God, who cannot understand,
And what of your fair Eastern land,
What dark brows brushed your dusky feet,
What warm hearts on your marble beat,
With many a prayer unanswered?”
My comrades laughed and passed.    I said,
“If in those lands you wander ...

First, there's the entrance, narrow, and so small,
The hat-stand seems to fill the tiny hall;
That staircase, too, has such an awkward bend,
The carpet rucks, and rises up on end!
Then, all the rooms are cramped and close together;
And there's a musty smell in rainy weather.
Yes, and it makes the daily work go hard
To have the only tap across a yard.
These creaking doors, these draughts, this battered paint,
Would try, I think, the temper of a saint,

How often had I railed against these things,
With envies, and with bitter murmurings
For spacious rooms, and sunny garden plots!
Until one day,
Washing the breakfast dishes, so I think,
I paused a moment in my work to pray;
And then and there
All life seemed suddenly made new and fair;
For, like th...

Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay,
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless,
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Unceasingly, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye,
Over the lilies that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!

I hate the very noise of troublous man
Who did and does me all the harm he can.
Free from the world I would a prisoner be
And my own shadow all my company;
And lonely see the shooting stars appear,
Worlds rushing into judgment all the year.
O lead me onward to the loneliest shade,
The darkest place that quiet ever made,
Where kingcups grow most beauteous to behold
And shut up green and open into gold.
Farewell to poesy--and leave the will;
Take all the world away--and leave me still
The mirth and music of a woman's voice,
That bids the heart be happy and rejoice.

O for that sweet, untroubled rest
That poets oft have sung!--
The babe upon its mother's breast,
The bird upon its young,
The heart asleep without a pain--
When shall I know that sleep again?

When shall I be as I have been
Upon my mother's breast
Sweet Nature's garb of verdant green
To woo to perfect rest--
Love in the meadow, field, and glen,
And in my native wilds again?

The sheep within the fallow field,
The herd upon the green,
The larks that in the thistle shield,
And pipe from morn to e'en--
O for the pasture, fields, and fen!
When shall I see such rest again?

I love the weeds along the fen,
More sweet than garden flowers,
For freedom haunts the humble glen
That blest my happiest hours.
Here prison injures ...

Moss-grown, and venerable it stands,
    From the way-side dust and noise aloof,
And the great elms stretch their sheltering hands
    To bless its grey old roof.

About it summer's greenery waves;
    The birds build fearless overhead;
Its shadow falls among the graves;
    Around it sleep the dead.

The summer sunshine softly takes
    The chancel window's pictured gloom;
The moonlight enters too, and makes
    The shadow of a tomb.

Along these aisles the bride hath passed,
    And brightened, with her innocent grace.
The pensive twilight years have cast
    About the holy place.

They brought her here--a tiny maid,
    Unweeting any gain or loss,
And on her baby forehead laid
    The symbol of the Cross.

And he...

Dear Dean, I'm in a sad condition,
    I cannot see to read or write;
Pity the darkness of thy Priscian,
    Whose days are all transform'd to night.

My head, though light, 's a dungeon grown,
    The windows of my soul are closed;
Therefore to sleep I lay me down,
    My verse and I are both composed.

Sleep, did I say? that cannot be;
    For who can sleep, that wants his eyes?
My bed is useless then to me,
    Therefore I lay me down to rise.

Unnumber'd thoughts pass to and fro
    Upon the surface of my brain;
In various maze they come and go,
    And come and go again.

So have you seen in sheet burnt black,
    The fiery sparks at random run;
Now here, now there, some turning back
    Some ending where they just begun...

[Footnote: Sickness may be often an incentive to poetical composition; I found it so; and I esteem the following lines only because they remind me of past feelings which I would not willingly forget.]


Health! I seek thee; - dost thou love
The mountain top or quiet vale,
Or deign o'er humbler hills to rove
On showery June's dark south-west gale?
If so, I'll meet all blasts that blow,
With silent step, but not forlorn;
Though, goddess, at thy shrine I bow,
And woo thee each returning morn.

I seek thee where, with all his might,
The joyous bird his rapture tells,
Amidst the half-excluded light,
That gilds the fox-glove's pendant bells;
Where, cheerly up this bold hill's side
The deep'ning groves triumphant climb;
In groves Delight and Peace abide,

He carved the red deer and the bull
Upon the smooth cave rock,
Returned from war with belly full,
And scarred with many a knock,
He carved the red deer and the bull
Upon the smooth cave rock.

The stars flew by the cave's wide door,
The clouds wild trumpets blew,
Trees rose in wild dreams from the floor,
Flowers with dream faces grew
Up to the sky, and softly hung
Golden and white and blue.

The woman ground her heap of corn,
Her heart a guarded fire;
The wind played in his trembling soul
Like a hand upon a lyre,
The wind drew faintly on the stone
Symbols of his desire:

The red deer of the forest dark,
Whose antlers cut the sky,
That vanishes into the mirk
And like a dream flits by,
And by an arrow slain at last

    I

    A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams,
    Saying, "Make haste: the webs of death and birth
    Are brushed away, and all the threads of earth
    Wear to the breaking; spaceward gleams
    Thine ancient pathway of the suns,
    Whose flame is part of thee;
    And deeps outreach immutably
    Whose largeness runs
    Through all thy spirit's mystery.
    Go forth, and tread unharmed the blaze
    Of stars where through thou camest in old days;
    Pierce without fear each vast
    Whose hugeness crushed thee not within the past.
    A hand strikes off the chains of Time,
    A hand swings back the door of years;
    Now fall earth's bonds of gladness and of tears,
    And opens the strait dream to space sublime."


    II...