And night that makes strong worlds of them unawares;
And all God’s other beautiful and nigh!
Nay, nay, I envy not! And these are dreams,
Fancies and images of real heaven!
My longings, all my longing prayers are given
For that which is, and not for that which seems.
Draw me, O Lord, to thy true heaven above,
The Heaven of thy Thought, thy Rest, thy Love.
The Dwellers Therein
Down a warm alley, early in the year,
Among the woods, with all the sunshine in
And all the winds outside it, I begin
To think that something gracious will appear,
If anything of grace inhabit here,
Or there be friendship in the woods to win.
Might one but find companions more akin
To trees and grass and happy daylight clear,
And in this wood spend one long hour at home!
The fairies do not love so bright a place,
And angels to the forest never come,
But I have dreamed of some harmonious race,
The kindred of the shapes that haunt the shore
Of Music’s flow and flow for evermore.
Autumn’s Gold
Along the tops of all the yellow trees,
The golden-yellow trees, the sunshine lies;
And where the leaves are gone, long rays surprise
Lone depths of thicket with their brightnesses;
And through the woods, all waste of many a breeze,
Cometh more joy of light for Poet’s eyes—
Green fields lying yellow underneath the skies,
And shining houses and blue distances.
By the roadside, like rocks of golden ore
That make the western river-beds so bright,
The briar and the furze are all alight!
Perhaps the year will be so fair no more,
But now the fallen, falling leaves are gay,
And autumn old has shone into a Day!
Punishment
Mourner, that dost deserve thy mournfulness,
Call thyself punished, call the earth thy hell;
Say, “God is angry, and I earned it well—
I would not have him smile on wickedness:”
Say this, and straightway all thy grief grows less:—
“God rules at least, I find as prophets tell,
And proves it in this prison!”—then thy cell
Smiles with an unsuspected loveliness.
—“A prison—and yet from door and window-bar
I catch a thousand breaths of his sweet air!
Even to me his days and nights are fair!
He shows me many a flower and many a star!
And though I mourn and he is very far,
He does not kill the hope that reaches there!”
Show Us the Father
“Show us the Father.” Chiming stars of space,
And lives that fit the worlds, and means and powers,
A Thought that holds them up reveal to ours—
A Wisdom we have been made wise to trace.
And, looking out from sweetest Nature’s face,
From sunsets, moonlights, rivers, hills, and flowers,
Infinite love and beauty, all the hours,
Woo men that love them with divinest grace;
And to the depths of all the answering soul
High Justice speaks, and calls the world her own;
And yet we long, and yet we have not known
The very Father’s face who means the whole!
Show us the Father! Nature, conscience, love
Revealed in beauty, is there One above?
The Pinafore
When peevish flaws his soul have stirred
To fretful tears for crossed desires,
Obedient to his mother’s word
My child to banishment retires.
As disappears the moon, when wind
Heaps miles of mist her visage o’er,
So vanisheth his face behind
The cloud of his white pinafore.
I cannot then come near my child—
A gulf between of gainful loss;
He to the infinite exiled—
I waiting, for I cannot cross.
Ah then, what wonder, passing show,
The Isis-veil behind it brings—
Like that self-coffined creatures know,
Remembering legs, foreseeing wings!
Mysterious moment! When or how
Is the bewildering change begun?
Hid in far deeps the awful now
When turns his being to the sun!
A light goes up behind his eyes,
A still small voice behind his ears;
A listing wind about him sighs,
And lo the inner landscape clears!
Hid by that screen, a wondrous shine
Is gathering for a sweet surprise;
As Moses grew, in dark divine,
Too radiant for his people’s eyes.
For when the garment sinks again,
Outbeams a brow of heavenly wile,
Clear as a morning after rain,
And sunny with a perfect smile.
Oh, would that I the secret knew
Of hiding from my evil part,
And turning to the lovely true
The open windows of my heart!
Lord, in thy skirt, love’s tender gaol,
Hide thou my selfish heart’s disgrace;
Fill me with light, and then unveil
To friend and foe a friendly face.
The Prism
I
A pool of broken sunbeams lay
Upon the passage-floor,
Radiant and rich, profound and gay
As ever diamond bore.
Small, flitting hands a handkerchief
Spread like a cunning trap:
Prone lay the gorgeous jewel-sheaf
In the glory-gleaner’s lap!
Deftly she folded up the prize,
With lovely avarice;
Like one whom having had made wise,
She bore it off in bliss.
But ah, when for her prisoned gems
She peeped, to prove them there,
No glories broken from their stems
Lay in the kerchief bare!
For still, outside the nursery door,
The bright persistency,
A molten diadem on the floor,
Lay burning wondrously.
II
How oft have I laid fold from fold
And peered into my mind—
To see of all the purple and gold
Not one gleam left behind!
The best of gifts will not be stored:
The manna of yesterday
Has filled no sacred miser-hoard
To keep new need away.
Thy grace, O Lord, it is thyself;
Thy presence is thy light;
I cannot lay it on my shelf,
Or take it from thy sight.
For daily bread we daily pray—
The want still breeds the cry;
And so we meet, day after day,
Thou, Father in heaven, and I.
Is my house dreary, wall and floor,
Will not the darkness flit,
I go outside my shadowy door
And in thy rainbow sit.
Sleep
Oh! is it Death that comes
To have a foretaste of the whole?
To-night the planets and the stars
Will glimmer through my window-bars
But will not shine upon my soul!
For I shall lie as dead
Though yet I am above the ground;
All passionless, with scarce a breath,
With hands of rest
