Spirituality

Bird, with the voice of gold,
Dropping wild bar on bar,
To which the flowers unfold,
Star upon gleaming star,
Here in the forest old:

Bird, with the note as clear,
Cool as a bead of dew,
To which the buds, that hear,
Open deep eyes of blue,
Prick up a rosy ear:

Shut in your house of leaves,
Bubbles of song you blow,
Showered whence none perceives,
Taking the wood below
Till its green bosom heaves.

Music of necromance,
Circles of silvering sound,
Wherein the fairies dance,
Weaving an elfin round,
Till the whole wood's a-trance.

Till, with the soul, one hears
Footsteps of mythic things:
Fauns, with their pointed ears,
Piping to haunted springs,
And the white nymph that nears.

Dryads, that...

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives th...

"All hail!" the bells of Christmas rang,
"All hail!" the monks at Christmas sang,
The merry monks who kept with cheer
The gladdest day of all their year.

But still apart, unmoved thereat,
A pious elder brother sat
Silent, in his accustomed place,
With God's sweet peace upon his face.

"Why sitt'st thou thus?" his brethren cried.
"It is the blessed Christmas-tide;
The Christmas lights are all aglow,
The sacred lilies bud and blow.

"Above our heads the joy-bells ring,
Without the happy children sing,
And all God's creatures hail the morn
On which the holy Christ was born!

"Rejoice with us; no more rebuke
Our gladness with thy quiet look."
The gray monk answered: "Keep, I pray,
Even as ye list, the Lord's birthday.

Holy and heavenly Spirits as they are,
Spotless in life, and eloquent as wise,
With what entire affection do they prize
Their Church reformed! labouring with earnest care
To baffle all that may her strength impair;
That Church, the unperverted Gospel's seat;
In their afflictions a divine retreat;
Source of their liveliest hope, and tenderest prayer!
The truth exploring with an equal mind,
In doctrine and communion they have sought
Firmly between the two extremes to steer;
But theirs the wise man's ordinary lot
To trace right courses for the stubborn blind,
And prophesy to ears that will not hear.

    This dense hard ground I tread.
    These iron bars that ripple past,
    Will they unshaken stand when I am dead
    And my deep thoughts outlast?

    Is it my spirit slips,
    Falls, like this leaf I kick aside;
    This firmness that I feel about my lips,
    Is it but empty pride?

    Mute knowledge conquers me;
    I contemplate them as they are,
    Faint earth and shadowy bars that shake and flee,
    Less hard, more transient far

    Than those unbodied hues
    The sunset flings on the calm river;
    And, as I look, a swiftness thrills my shoes
    And my hands with empire quiver.

    Now light the ground I tread,
    I walk not now but rather float;
    Clear but unreal is the scene outspread,
    Pitiful,...

(The poem shows the Master, with his work done, singing to free his heart in Heaven.)

This poem is intended to be half said, half sung, very softly, to the well-known tune: -

            "Last night I lay a-sleeping,
            There came a dream so fair,
            I stood in Old Jerusalem
            Beside the temple there, - " etc.

Yet this tune is not to be fitted on, arbitrarily.    It is here given to suggest the manner of handling rather than determine it.


                    # To be sung. #
    I heard Immanuel singing
    Within his own good lands,
    I saw him bend above his harp.
    I watched his wandering hands
    Lost amid the harp-strings;
    Sweet, sweet I heard him play.
    His wounds were altogether healed.
   ...

Andrew Rykman’s dead and gone;
You can see his leaning slate
In the graveyard, and thereon
Read his name and date.

“Trust is truer than our fears,”
Runs the legend through the moss,
“Gain is not in added years,
Nor in death is loss.”

Still the feet that thither trod,
All the friendly eyes are dim;
Only Nature, now, and God
Have a care for him.

There the dews of quiet fall,
Singing birds and soft winds stray:
Shall the tender Heart of all
Be less kind than they?

What he was and what he is
They who ask may haply find,
If they read this prayer of his
Which he left behind.

.        .        .        .        .

Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare
Shape in words a mortal’s prayer!
Prayer, that, when...

She dwelt within a convent wall
Beside the "blue Moselle,"
And pure and simple was her life
As is the tale I tell.

She never shrank from penance rude,
And was so young and fair,
It was a holy, holy thing,
To see her at her prayer.

Her cheek was very thin and pale;
You would have turned in fear,
If 't were not for the hectic spot
That glowed so soft and clear.

And always, as the evening chime
With measured cadence fell,
Her vespers o'er, she sought alone
A little garden dell.

And when she came to us again,
She moved with lighter air;
We thought the angels ministered
To her while kneeling there.

One eve I followed on her way,
And asked her of her life.
A faint blush mantled cheek and brow,
The sign...

Elia, thy reveries and visioned themes
To care's lorn heart a luscious pleasure prove;
Wild as the mystery of delightful dreams,
Soft as the anguish of remembered love:
Like records of past days their memory dances
Mid the cool feelings manhood's reason brings,
As the unearthly visions of romances
Peopled with sweet and uncreated things;--
And yet thy themes thy gentle worth enhances!
Then wake again thy wild harp's tenderest strings,
Sing on, sweet Bard, let fairy loves again
Smile in thy dreams, with angel ecstasies;
Bright over our souls will break the heavenly strain
Through the dull gloom of earth's realities.

Night on the city of the Moor!
On mosque and tomb, and white-walled shore,
On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless knock
The narrow harbor gates unlock,
On corsair's galley, carack tall,
And plundered Christian caraval!
The sounds of Moslem life are still;
No mule-bell tinkles down the hill;
Stretched in the broad court of the khan,
The dusty Bornou caravan
Lies heaped in slumber, beast and man;
The Sheik is dreaming in his tent,
His noisy Arab tongue o'erspent;
The kiosk's glimmering lights are gone,
The merchant with his wares withdrawn;
Rough pillowed on some pirate breast,
The dancing-girl has sunk to rest;
And, save where measured footsteps fall
Along the Bashaw's guarded wall,
Or where, like some bad dream, the Jew
Creeps stealthily his quar...

Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.

There in her place she did rejoice,
Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind,
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind.

Then stept she down thro' town and field
To mingle with the human race,
And part by part to men reveal'd
The fullness of her face --

Grave mother of majestic works,
From her isle-alter gazing down,
Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks,
And, King-like, wears the crown:

Her open eyes desire the truth.
The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them. May perpetual youth
Keep dry their light from tears;

That her fair form may stand and shine
Make bright ...

No wind there is that either pipes or moans;
The fields are cold and still; the sky
Is covered with a blue-gray sheet
Of motionless cloud; and at my feet
The river, curling softly by,
Whispers and dimples round its quiet gray stones.

Along the chill green slope that dips and heaves
The road runs rough and silent, lined
With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray,
And poplars pallid as the day,
In masses spectral, undefined,
Pale greenish stems half hid in dry gray leaves.

And on beside the river's sober edge
A long fresh field lies black. Beyond,
Low thickets gray and reddish stand,
Stroked white with birch; and near at hand,
Over a little steel-smooth pond,
Hang multitudes of thin and withering sedge.

Across a waste and solitary rise

There's joy when the rosy morning floods
    The purple east with light,
When the zephyr sweeps from a thousand buds
    The pearly tears of night.
There's joy when the lark exulting springs
    To pour his matin lay,
From the blossomed thorn when the blackbird sings,
    And the merry month is May.

There's joy abroad when the wintry snow
    Melts as it ne'er had been,
When cowslips bud and violets blow,
    And leaves are fresh and green.
There's joy in the swallow's airy flight,
    In the cuckoo's blithesome cry,
When the floating clouds reflect the light
    Of evening's glowing sky.

There's joy in April's balmy showers
    'Mid gleam of sunshine shed,
When May calls forth a thousand flowers
    To deck the earth's green bed.

When warm'd with zeal, my rustic Muse
Feels fluttering fain to tell her news,
And paint her simple, lowly views
With all her art,
And, though in genius but obtuse,
May touch the heart.

Of palaces and courts of kings
She thinks but little, never sings,
But wildly strikes her uncouth strings
In some pool cot,
Spreads o'er the poor hen fostering wings,
And soothes their lot.

Well pleased is she to see them smile,
And uses every honest wile
To mend then hearts, their cares beguile,
With rhyming story,
And lend them to then God the while,
And endless glory.

Perchance, my poor neglected Muse
Unfit to harass or amuse,
Escaping praise and loud abuse,
Unheard, unknown,
May feed the moths and wasting dews,
As some hav...

Forever fair, forever calm and bright,
Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,
For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice
Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb,
And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom
The rosy days of Gods With man, the choice,
Timid and anxious, hesitates between
The sense's pleasure and the soul's content;
While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.

Seekest thou on earth the life of gods to share,
Safe in the realm of death? beware
To pluck the fruits that glitter to thine eye;
Content thyself with gazing on their glow
Short are the joys possession can bestow,
And in possession sweet desire will die.
'Twas not the ninefold chain of waves that bound
Thy daughter, Ceres, to the Stygian river
She plucked t...

All day the nations climb and crawl and pray
In one long pilgrimage to one white shrine,
Where sleeps a saint whose pardon, like his peace,
Is wide as death, as common, as divine.

His statue in an aureole fills the shrine,
The reckless nightingale, the roaming fawn,
Share the broad blessing of his lifted hands,
Under the canopy, above the lawn.

But one strange night, a night of gale and flood,
A sound came louder than the wild wind's tone;
The grave-gates shook and opened: and one stood
Blue in the moonlight, rotten to the bone.

Then on the statue, graven with holy smiles,
There came another smile--tremendous--one
Of an Egyptian god. 'Why should you rise?
'Do I not guard your secret from the sun?

The nations come; they kneel among the f...

    When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
        Upon the spirit aching for the light
    And all the wide horizon's line is hid
        By a black day sadder than any night;

    When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank
        Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering
    And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank,
        Bruises his tender head and timid wing;

    When like grim prison-bars stretch down the thin,
        Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain,
    And the dumb throngs of infamous spiders spin
        Their meshes in the caverns of the brain;,

    Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air,
        Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky
    As 'twere a band of homeless spirits who fare
        Through the strange he...

When by the wall the tiger-flower swings
A head of sultry slumber and aroma;
And by the path, whereon the blown rose flings
Its obsolete beauty, the long lilies foam a
White place of perfume, like a beautiful breast
Between the pansy fire of the west,
And poppy mist of moonrise in the east,
This heartache will have ceased.
The witchcraft of soft music and sweet sleep
Let it beguile the burthen from my spirit,
And white dreams reap me as strong reapers reap
The ripened grain and full blown blossom near it;
Let me behold how gladness gives the whole
The transformed countenance of my own soul
Between the sunset and the risen moon
Let sorrow vanish soon.
And these things then shall keep me company:
The elfins of the dew; the spirit of laughter
Who haunts...