Poems - Household Edition | Page 6

lay on the ground;?Over me soared the eternal sky.?Full of light and of deity;?Again I saw, again I heard,?The rolling river, the morning bird;--?Beauty through my senses stole;?I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
THE PROBLEM
I like a church; I like a cowl;?I love a prophet of the soul;?And on my heart monastic aisles?Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles?Yet not for all his faith can see?Would I that cowlèd churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure,?Which I could not on me endure?
Not from a vain or shallow thought?His awful Jove young Phidias brought;?Never from lips of cunning fell?The thrilling Delphic oracle;?Out from the heart of nature rolled?The burdens of the Bible old;?The litanies of nations came,?Like the volcano's tongue of flame,?Up from the burning core below,--?The canticles of love and woe:?The hand that rounded Peter's dome?And groined the aisles of Christian Rome?Wrought in a sad sincerity;?Himself from God he could not free;?He builded better than he knew;--?The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest?Of leaves, and feathers from her breast??Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,?Painting with morn each annual cell??Or how the sacred pine-tree adds?To her old leaves new myriads??Such and so grew these holy piles,?Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.?Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,?As the best gem upon her zone,?And Morning opes with haste her lids?To gaze upon the Pyramids;?O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,?As on its friends, with kindred eye;?For out of Thought's interior sphere?These wonders rose to upper air;?And Nature gladly gave them place,?Adopted them into her race,?And granted them an equal date?With Andes and with Ararat.
These temples grew as grows the grass;?Art might obey, but not surpass.?The passive Master lent his hand?To the vast soul that o'er him planned;?And the same power that reared the shrine?Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.?Ever the fiery Pentecost?Girds with one flame the countless host,?Trances the heart through chanting choirs,?And through the priest the mind inspires.?The word unto the prophet spoken?Was writ on tables yet unbroken;?The word by seers or sibyls told,?In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,?Still floats upon the morning wind,?Still whispers to the willing mind.?One accent of the Holy Ghost?The heedless world hath never lost.?I know what say the fathers wise,--?The Book itself before me lies,?Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,?And he who blent both in his line,?The younger Golden Lips or mines,?Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines.?His words are music in my ear,?I see his cowlèd portrait dear;?And yet, for all his faith could see,?I would not the good bishop be.
TO RHEA
Thee, dear friend, a brother soothes,?Not with flatteries, but truths,?Which tarnish not, but purify?To light which dims the morning's eye.?I have come from the spring-woods,?From the fragrant solitudes;--?Listen what the poplar-tree?And murmuring waters counselled me.
If with love thy heart has burned;?If thy love is unreturned;?Hide thy grief within thy breast,?Though it tear thee unexpressed;?For when love has once departed?From the eyes of the false-hearted,?And one by one has torn off quite?The bandages of purple light;?Though thou wert the loveliest?Form the soul had ever dressed,?Thou shalt seem, in each reply,?A vixen to his altered eye;?Thy softest pleadings seem too bold,?Thy praying lute will seem to scold;?Though thou kept the straightest road,?Yet thou errest far and broad.
But thou shalt do as do the gods?In their cloudless periods;?For of this lore be thou sure,--?Though thou forget, the gods, secure,?Forget never their command,?But make the statute of this land.?As they lead, so follow all,?Ever have done, ever shall.?Warning to the blind and deaf,?'T is written on the iron leaf,?Who drinks of Cupid's nectar cup?Loveth downward, and not up;?He who loves, of gods or men,?Shall not by the same be loved again;?His sweetheart's idolatry?Falls, in turn, a new degree.?When a god is once beguiled?By beauty of a mortal child?And by her radiant youth delighted,?He is not fooled, but warily knoweth?His love shall never be requited.?And thus the wise Immortal doeth,--?'T is his study and delight?To bless that creature day and night;?From all evils to defend her;?In her lap to pour all splendor;?To ransack earth for riches rare,?And fetch her stars to deck her hair:?He mixes music with her thoughts,?And saddens her with heavenly doubts:?All grace, all good his great heart knows,?Profuse in love, the king bestows,?Saying, 'Hearken! Earth, Sea, Air!?This monument of my despair?Build I to the All-Good, All-Fair.?Not for a private good,?But I, from my beatitude,?Albeit scorned as none was scorned,?Adorn her as was none adorned.?I make this maiden an ensample?To Nature, through her kingdoms ample,?Whereby to model newer races,?Statelier forms and fairer faces;?To carry man to new degrees?Of power and of comeliness.?These presents be the hostages?Which I pawn for my release.?See to thyself, O Universe!?Thou art better, and not worse.'--?And the god, having given all,?Is freed forever from his thrall.
THE VISIT
Askest, 'How long thou shalt stay?'?Devastator of the day!?Know, each substance and relation,?Thorough nature's