Poems - Household Edition | Page 6

by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his
hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;--
The gay enchantment was
undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, 'I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe
childhood's cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of youth:'--
As I spoke, beneath
my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;

I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and
acorns 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