Classic Poem

Prologue

Religion, she that stands sublime
 Upon the rock that crowns our globe,
Her foot on all the spoils of time,
 With light eternal on her robe;

She, sovereign of the orb she guides,
 On truth's broad sun may root a gaze
That deepens, onward as she rides,
 And shrinks not from the fontal blaze;

But they—her daughter arts—must hide
 Within the cleft, content to see
Dim skirts of glory waving wide,
 And steps of parting deity.

'Tis theirs to watch the vision break
 In gleams from nature's frown or smile,
The legend rise from out the lake,
 The relic consecrate the isle.

'Tis theirs to adumbrate and suggest;
 To point towards founts of buried lore;
Leaving, in type alone expressed,
 What man must know not, yet adore.

For where her court true wisdom keeps,
 'Mid loftier handmaids, one there stands
Dark as the midnight's starry deeps,
 A slave, gem-crowned, from Nubia's sands.

O thou whose light is in thy heart,
 Reverence, love's mother! without thee
Science may soar awhile; but art
 Drifts barren o'er a shoreless sea.

I

Who feels not, when the spring once more,
 Stepping o'er winter's grave forlorn
With winged feet, retreads the shore
 Of widowed earth, his bosom burn?

As ordered flower succeeds to flower,
 And May the ladder of her sweets
Ascends, advancing hour by hour
 From step to step, what heart but beats?

Some presence veiled, in fields and groves,
 That mingles rapture with remorse;
Some buried joy beside us moves,
 And thrills the soul with such discourse

As they, perchance, that wondering pair
 Who to Emmaus bent their way,
Hearing, heard not. Like them our prayer
 We make: “The night is near us. . . . Stay!”

With paschal chants the churches ring;
 Their echoes strike along the tombs;
The birds their hallelujahs sing;
 Each flower with nature's incense fumes.

Our long-lost Eden seems restored:
 As on we move with tearful eyes
We feel through all the illumined sward
 Some upward-working Paradise.

II

Upon Thy face, O God, Thy world
 Looks ever up in love and awe;
Thy stars, in circles onward hurled,
 Sustain the steadying yoke of law.

In alternating antiphons
 Stream sings to stream and sea to sea;
And moons that set and sinking suns
 Obeisance make, O God, to Thee.

The swallow, winter's rage o'er blown,
 Again, on warm spring breezes borne,
Revisiteth her haunts well-known;
 The lark is faithful to the morn.

The whirlwind, missioned with its wings
 To drown the fleet or fell the tower,
Obeys Thee as the bird that sings
 Her love-chant in a fleeting shower.

Amid an ordered universe
 Man's spirit only dares rebel:
With light, O God, its darkness pierce!
 With love its raging chaos quell!