No need to count the coming stars,
Nor watch those wimpled pearly bars
That flush above the west; but follow
In idler mood the idle swallow,
With careless, half-unconscious eye,
Round his great circles on the sky,
Till he, and all things, lose for you
Their being in that depth of blue.
O fevered brain, with searching strained
Till every pulsing nerve is pained,
In tranquil hours is balm for you:
Vex not the thoughts with false and true;
Be still and bathe them in the blue.
sad conviction throw
99
To every
This grim defiance: "Be it so!
To doubts that will not let you sleep,
This answer: "Wait! the truth will keep.
Weary, and marred with care and pain
And bruising days, the human brain
Draws wounded inward, it might be
Some delicate creature of the sea,
That, shuddering, shrinks its lucent dome,
And coils its azure tendrils home,
And folds its filmy curtains tight,
At jarring contact, e'er so light.
But let it float away all free,
And feel the buoyant, supple sea
Among its tinted streamers swell,
Again it spreads its gauzy rings,
And, waving its wan fringes, swings
With rhythmic pulse its crystal bell.
Think out, float out away from where
The pressure of the trembling air
Keeps down to earth the shrunken mind.
Set free the smothered thought, and find,
Beyond our world, a vaster place
To thrill and vibrate out through space,
As some auroral banner streams
Up through the night in widening gleams,
And floats and flashes o'er our dreams;
There let the whirling planet fall
Down - down, till but a vanishing ball,
A misty gleam: and dwindled so,
Thyself, thy world, no trace can show;
Too small to have a care or woe
Or wish, apart from that one Will
That doth His worlds with music fill.
haunt thou not me,
Thou vain Philosophy!
Little hast thou bestead,
Save to perplex the head,
And leave the spirit dead.
Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go,
While from the secret treasure-depths below,
Fed by the skiey shower,
And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high,
Wisdom at once, and Power,
Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly?
Why labour at the dull mechanic oar,
When the fresh breeze is blowing,
And the strong current flowing,
Right onward to the Eternal Shore?
HEAR it often in the dark,
I
I hear it in the light, —
Where is the voice that calls to me
With such a quiet might?
It seems but echo to my thought,
And yet beyond the stars;
It seems a heart-beat in a hush,
And yet the planet jars!
O, may it be that far within
My inmost soul there lies
A spirit-sky, that opens with
Those voices of surprise?
And can it be, by night and day,
That firmament serene
Is just the heaven where God himself,
The Father, dwells unseen?
O God within, so close to me
That every thought is plain,
Be judge, be friend, be Father still,
And in thy heaven reign!
my very soul!
Thy heaven is mine,
Thy words are sweet and strong;
They fill my inward silences
With music and with song.
They send me challenges to right,
And loud rebuke my ill;
They ring my bells of victory,
They breathe my "Peace, be still!"
My child,
They ever seem to say
Why seek me so all day?
Now journey inward to thyself,
And listen by the way."
The plant beside me feels Thy gentle dew;
And every blade of grass I see,
From Thy deep earth its quickening moisture
drew.
Wilt Thou not visit me?
Thy morning calls on me with cheering tone,
And every hill and tree
Lends but one voice, the voice of Thee alone.
Come, for I need Thy love,
More than the flower the dew, or grass the rain;
Come, gently as Thy holy dove;
And let me in Thy sight rejoice to live again.
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