Classic Poem

My soul kept Sabbath on a summer day,
Upon a breezy upland far away.

The tenderness of hillsides entered in;
The patience of grey, mossy-stained, old rocks
That through the grass their wrinkled foreheads press
Like mighty bulls; the quaking earth might win
Observance from them by repeated shocks,
But nothing less.

The faithfulness of pine-trees, pointing still
To the great, blue abyss forevermore,
In one long, grand, uplifted, reverent mood;
The trustfulness of birds who fear no ill
The skies hold for them as they blithely soar,
Seemed in my sight most good

And so the graciousness of lady elms,
In soft green clothed along their shapely forms;
The staunchness of old, weather-beaten oaks,
That scorn to bow when winter wind o'erwhelms,
Facing the raging of a thousand storms
In ragged cloaks.

But most the holiness of sailing clouds
Did fill me. These in splendid white all clad
Move on in solemn pomp across the sky,
Like saintly dead in snowy, radiant shrouds,
Passing God's throne in a procession glad
Of joyful mystery

The whole long luxury of summer's glow
Thus swelled and swelled to perfect peace;—and so
My soul kept Sabbath on that summer day
Upon a breezy upland far away.