Spirituality

For those my unbaptized rhymes,
Writ in my wild unhallowed times,
For every sentence, clause, and word,
That's not inlaid with Thee, my Lord,
Forgive me, God, and blot each line
Out of my book, that is not Thine.
But if, 'mongst all, Thou find'st here one
Worthy thy benediction,
That one of all the rest shall be
The glory of my work, and me.

Of all who hail thy presence as the morning,
Of all to whom thine absence is the night,
The blotting utterly from out high heaven
The sacred sun, of all who, weeping, bless thee
Hourly for hope, for life, ah, above all,
For the resurrection of deep buried faith
In truth, in virtue, in humanity,
Of all who, on despair's unhallowed bed
Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen
At thy soft-murmured words, "Let there be light!"
At thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled
In thy seraphic glancing of thine eyes,
Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude
Nearest resembles worship,, oh, remember
The truest, the most fervently devoted,
And think that these weak lines are written by him,
By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think
His spirit is communing with an...

        Amid my books I lived the hurrying years,
        Disdaining kinship with my fellow man;
        Alike to me were human smiles and tears,
        I cared not whither Earth's great life-stream ran,
        Till as I knelt before my mouldered shrine,
        God made me look into a woman's eyes;
        And I, who thought all earthly wisdom mine,
        Knew in a moment that the eternal skies
        Were measured but in inches, to the quest
        That lay before me in that mystic gaze.
        "Surely I have been errant:    it is best
        That I should tread, with men their human ways."
        God took the teacher, ere the task was learned,
        And to my lonely books again I turned.

        All day he drowses by the sail
        With dreams of her, and all night long
        The broken waters are at song
        Of how she lingers, wild and pale,
        When all the temple lights are dumb,
        And weaves her spells to make him come.

        The wide sea traversed, he will stand
        With straining eyes, until the shoal
        Green water from the prow shall roll
        Upon the yellow strip of sand--
        Searching some fern-hid tangled way
        Into the forest old and grey.

        Then he will leap upon the shore,
        And cast one look up at the sun,
        Over his loosened locks will run
        The dawn breeze, and a bird will pour
        Its rapture out to make life seem
        Too sweet to le...

I have no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde,
Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle,
Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while;
Nor Uladh, when Naoise had thrown a sail upon the wind;
Nor lands that seem too dim to be burdens on the heart:
Land-under-Wave, where out of the moon's light and the sun's
Seven old sisters wind the threads of the long-lived ones,
Land-of-the-Tower, where Aengus has thrown the gates apart,
And Wood-of-Wonders, where one kills an ox at dawn,
To find it when night falls laid on a golden bier.
Therein are many queens like Branwen and Guinevere;
And Niamh and Laban and Fand, who could change to an otter or fawn,
And the wood-woman, whose lover was changed to a blue-eyed hawk;
And whether I go in my dreams by woodland, or dun...

I don't know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:

for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it:

the swamp's slow water comes
down Gravelly Run fanning the long
stone-held algal
hair and narrowing roils between
the shoulders of the highway bridge:

holly grows on the banks in the woods there,
and the cedars' gothic-clustered
spires could make
green religion in winter bones:

so I look and reflect, but the air's glass
jail seals each thing in its entity:
...

Not in the world of light alone,
Where God has built his blazing throne,
Nor yet alone in earth below,
With belted seas that come and go,
And endless isles of sunlit green,
Is all thy Maker's glory seen:
Look in upon thy wondrous frame, -
Eternal wisdom still the same!

The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves
Flows murmuring through its hidden caves,
Whose streams of brightening purple rush,
Fired with a new and livelier blush,
While all their burden of decay
The ebbing current steals away,
And red with Nature's flame they start
From the warm fountains of the heart.

No rest that throbbing slave may ask,
Forever quivering o'er his task,
While far and wide a crimson jet
Leaps forth to fill the woven net
Which in unnumbered cross...

    Do you remember that June day among
    The hills, the high, far-reaching Sussex hills?
    Above, the straggling flocks of fleecy clouds
    That skipped and chased each other merrily
    In God's warm pasturage, the azure sky;
    Below, the hills that stretched their mighty heads
    As though they fain would neighbor with that sky.
    Deep, vivid green, save where the flocks showed white;
    The wise ewes hiding from the glow of noon
    In shady spots, the short-wooled lambs at play,
    And over all the stillness of the hills,
    The sweet and solemn stillness of the hills.

    The shepherds gave us just such looks of mild
    Surprise as did the sheep they shepherded.
    "Ye are not of the hills," so said the looks,
    "Not of our kind, but st...

Rotha, my Spiritual Child! this head was grey
When at the sacred font for thee I stood;
Pledged till thou reach the verge of womanhood,
And shalt become thy own sufficient stay:
Too late, I feel, sweet Orphan! was the day
For stedfast hope the contract to fulfil;
Yet shall my blessing hover o'er thee still,
Embodied in the music of this Lay,
Breathed forth beside the peaceful mountain Stream
Whose murmur soothed thy languid Mother's ear
After her throes, this Stream of name more dear
Since thou dost bear it, a memorial theme
For others; for thy future self, a spell
To summon fancies out of Time's dark cell.

Weep not too much, my darling;
Sigh not too oft for me;
Say not the face of Nature
Has lost its charm for thee.
I have enough of anguish
In my own breast alone;
Thou canst not ease the burden, Love,
By adding still thine own.

I know the faith and fervour
Of that true heart of thine;
But I would have it hopeful
As thou wouldst render mine.
At night, when I lie waking,
More soothing it will be
To say 'She slumbers calmly now,'
Than say 'She weeps for me.'

When through the prison grating
The holy moonbeams shine,
And I am wildly longing
To see the orb divine
Not crossed, deformed, and sullied
By those relentless bars
That will not show the crescent moon,
And scarce the twinkling stars,

It is my only comfor...

Talk not to me of souls that do conceive
    Sublime ideals, but, deterred by Fate
    And bound by circumstances, sit desolate,
And long for heights they never can achieve.

It is not so.    That which we most desire,
    With understanding, we at last obtain,
    In part or whole.    I hold there is no rain,
No deluge, that can quench a heavenly fire.

Show me thy labour, I straightway will name
    The nature of thy thoughts.    Who bends the bow,
    And lets the arrow from the strained string go,
Strikes somewhere near the object of his aim.

We build our ships from timbers of the brain;
    With products of the soul we load the hold;
    Where lies the blame if they bring back no gold,
Or if they spring a leak upon the main?

T...

Whoever you are as you read this,
    Whatever your trouble or grief,
I want you to know and to heed this,
    The day draweth near with relief.

No sorrow, no woe, is unending;
    Though heaven seems voiceless and dumb,
Remember your cry is ascending,
    And an answer will certainly come.

Whatever temptation is near you,
    Whose eyes on this simple verse fall,
Remember good angels will hear you,
    And help you, so sure as you call.

Who stunned with despair, I beseech you,
    Whatever your losses, your need,
Believe when these printed words reach you -
    Believe you were born to succeed.

Space and dread and the dark,
Over a livid stretch of sky
Cloud-monsters crawling like a funeral train
Of huge primeval presences
Stooping beneath the weight
Of some enormous, rudimentary grief;
While in the haunting loneliness
The far sea waits and wanders, with a sound
As of the trailing skirts of Destiny
Passing unseen
To some immitigable end
With her grey henchman, Death.

What larve, what spectre is this
Thrilling the wilderness to life
As with the bodily shape of Fear?
What but a desperate sense,
A strong foreboding of those dim,
Interminable continents, forlorn
And many-silenced in a dusk
Inviolable utterly, and dead
As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes
In hugger-mugger through eternity?

Life, life, l...

This last denial of my faith,
Thou, solemn Priest, hast heard;
And, though upon my bed of death,
I call not back a word.
Point not to thy Madonna, Priest,
Thy sightless saint of stone;
She cannot, from this burning breast,
Wring one repentant moan.

Thou say'st, that when a sinless child,
I duly bent the knee,
And prayed to what in marble smiled
Cold, lifeless, mute, on me.
I did. But listen! Children spring
Full soon to riper youth;
And, for Love's vow and Wedlock's ring,
I sold my early truth.

'Twas not a grey, bare head, like thine,
Bent o'er me, when I said,
"That land and God and Faith are mine,
For which thy fathers bled."
I see thee not, my eyes are dim;
But well I hear thee say,
"O daughter cease to think of him...

Broke the deep slumber in my brain a crash
Of heavy thunder, that I shook myself,
As one by main force rous'd.    Risen upright,
My rested eyes I mov'd around, and search'd
With fixed ken to know what place it was,
Wherein I stood.    For certain on the brink
I found me of the lamentable vale,
The dread abyss, that joins a thund'rous sound
Of plaints innumerable.    Dark and deep,
And thick with clouds o'erspread, mine eye in vain
Explor'd its bottom, nor could aught discern.

"Now let us to the blind world there beneath
Descend;" the bard began all pale of look:
"I go the first, and thou shalt follow next."

Then I his alter'd hue perceiving, thus:
"How may I speed, if thou yieldest to dread,
Who still art wont to comfort me in doubt?"

He...

Is the way hard and thorny, oh, my brother?
    Do tempests beat, and adverse wild winds blow?
And are you spent, and broken, at each nightfall,
    Yet with each morn you rise and onward go?
Brother, I know, I know!
I, too, have journeyed so.

Is your heart mad with longing, oh, my sister?
    Are all great passions in your breast aglow?
Does the white wonder of your own soul blind you,
    And are you torn with rapture and with woe?
Sister, I know, I know!
I, too, have suffered so.

Is the road filled with snare and quicksand, pilgrim?
    Do pitfalls lie where roses seem to grow?
And have you sometimes stumbled in the darkness,
    And are you bruised and scarred by many a blow?
Pilgrim, I know, I know!
I, too, have stumbled so.

Do...

'The mist is resting on the hill;
The smoke is hanging in the air;
The very clouds are standing still:
A breathless calm broods everywhere.
Thou pilgrim through this vale of tears,
Thou, too, a little moment cease
Thy anxious toil and fluttering fears,
And rest thee, for a while, in peace.'

'I would, but Time keeps working still
And moving on for good or ill:
He will not rest or stay.
In pain or ease, in smiles or tears,
He still keeps adding to my years
And stealing life away.
His footsteps in the ceaseless sound
Of yonder clock I seem to hear,
That through this stillness so profound
Distinctly strikes the vacant ear.
For ever striding on and on,
He pauses not by night or day;
And all my life will soon be gone
As these past year...

WRITTEN IN MAY, 1689, AT THE DESIRE OF THE LATE LORD BISHOP OF ELY


I

Truth is eternal, and the Son of Heaven,
        Bright effluence of th'immortal ray,
Chief cherub, and chief lamp, of that high sacred Seven,
Which guard the throne by night, and are its light by day;
        First of God's darling attributes,
        Thou daily seest him face to face,
Nor does thy essence fix'd depend on giddy circumstance
        Of time or place,
Two foolish guides in every sublunary dance;
    How shall we find Thee then in dark disputes?
    How shall we search Thee in a battle gain'd,
    Or a weak argument by force maintain'd?
In dagger contests, and th'artillery of words,
(For swords are madmen's tongues, and tongues are madmen's swords,)
        Co...