Classic Poem

I

Dumb

They chime, they chime, the sweet cathedral bells,
Cleaving my cloudy thought, if murkiest cloud
E'er hung so heavy as, on spirit bowed,
This drear confusion weighs. Where is it dwells
My truth of soul? What veil of shifting spells,
Duties unduteous, glamours disallowed,
Myself doth from myself forever shroud?
Once more that silver-throated peal outwells.
Amid the chanting throng I kneel alone,
Mute, dull of heart, yet fain to screen the brow.
Interpret me to Heaven, deep organ tone!
Oh, soaring arch, bear witness for me now!
My dumb God-passion speak, great minster, thou
For centuries a human prayer in stone!

II

Matins

Clamor of rooks from pinnacle and spire
Hails an encrimsoned east; but chill and gray
Below the pillared vistas arch away
Through shadowy nave to glory-smitten choir,
Where Orient sunbeams thrill with jeweled fire
The dreaming glass that blossoms unto day
In roseate plumes and golden halo-ray
And seraph faces rapt with God-desire.
Ah, yet these walls, though hoary with the woe
And shrift of centuries, are all too strait
For such a splendor. From the elm-roofed lawn,
Where throstles chant and streams responsive flow,
I'll worship Him on Whom my longings wait,
Before the great east window of the dawn.