Classic Poem

A wild joy fills my overburdened brain.
My ears drink music from each thunder peal.
I glory in the lightnings and the rain.
There is no joy like this! With thee to feel
And share each impulse, makes my spirit kneel.
Sing to me, love! my heart is pained with bliss!
Thy voice alone can quicken and unseal
The inner depths of feeling. Grant me this:
Flood me with Song, and loose the founts of Happiness.

HYMN TO THE LIGHTNING.

Oh! mighty, Oh! mysterious One!
Thou willest, and the lightnings fly,
Flame-winged and silent, through the sky,
Outglowing the exultant sun.

Along the hills reverberates
The eloquent, sonorous bass,
Shaking the earth from place to place,
Then heavenward to Thy temple gates,

Where every whisper, every tone
Of music, from the earth, rolls in,
Whether from putrid lips of sin,
Or girdled by a prayerful zone.

Thy Voice is in the thunder cloud,
Thy Presence in the lightning's fire —
Breathings of an Almighty Ire,
That wraps the heavens in a shroud

Of blinding light, before whose heat
The granite mountains melt away,
And finite Man falls down to pray
For mercy at his Maker's feet.

How Vast art Thou! how minute he! —
A human tissue which a breath
Can hurl from quickest life to death —
An atom to Immensity.

Oh! wondrous Power! Oh! strength Divine!
Oh! weak and insignific Man! —
Weak here, but in the After-plan
Not less eterne than Thee and Thine!