Spirituality

Poets are strange -- not always understood
By many is their gift,
Which is for evil or for mighty good --
To lower or to lift.

Upon their spirits there hath come a breath;
Who reads their verse
Will rise to higher life, or taste of death
In blessing or in curse.

The Poet is great Nature's own high priest,
Ordained from very birth
To keep for hearts an everlasting feast --
To bless or curse the earth.

They cannot help but sing; they know not why
Their thoughts rush into song,
And float above the world, beneath the sky,
For right or for the wrong.

They are like angels -- but some angels fell,
While some did keep their place;
Their poems are the gates of heav'n or hell,
And God's or Satan's face

Looks thro' their ...

Running water has a charm all its own; it proffers companionship of which one never tires; it adapts itself to moods; it is the guardian of secrets. It has cool draughts for the thirsty soul as well as for drooping flowers; and they who wander in the garden of God with listening ears learn of its many voices.

When the strain of a working day has left me weary, perhaps troubled and perplexed, I find my way to the river. I step into a boat and pull up stream until the exertion has refreshed me; and then I make fast to the old alder-stump where last year the reed- piper nested, and lie back in the stern and think.

The water laps against the keel as the boat rocks gently in the current; the river flows past, strong and quiet. There are side eddies, of course, and little disturbing whirlpools near the big stones, but they...

Unfading Hope! when life's last embers burn
When soul to soul, and dust to dust return,
Heaven to thy charge resigns the awful hour!
Oh! then thy kingdom comes, Immortal Power!
What though each spark of earth-born rapture fly
The quivering lip, pale cheek, and closing eye!
Bright to the soul thy seraph hands convey
The morning dream of life's eternal day
Then, then, the triumph and the trance begin,
And all the phoenix-spirit burns within!

Oh, deep enchanting prelude to repose,
The dawn of bliss, the twilight of our woes!
Yet half I hear the parting spirit sigh,
It is a dread and awful thing to die!
Mysterious worlds, untravell'd by the sun!
Where Time's far-wandering tide has never run,
From your unfathom'd shades, and viewless spheres,
A warning c...

Where swallows and wheatfields are,
O hamlet brown and still,
O river that shineth far,
By meadow, pier, and mill:

O endless sunsteeped plain,
With forests in dim blue shrouds,
And little wisps of rain,
Falling from far-off clouds:

I come from the choking air
Of passion, doubt, and strife,
With a spirit and mind laid bare
To your healing breadth of life:

O fruitful and sacred ground,
O sunlight and summer sky,
Absorb me and fold me round,
For broken and tired am I.

Angel of Death! extend thy silent reign!
Stretch thy dark sceptre o'er this new domain
No sable car along the winding road
Has borne to earth its unresisting load;
No sudden mound has risen yet to show
Where the pale slumberer folds his arms below;
No marble gleams to bid his memory live
In the brief lines that hurrying Time can give;
Yet, O Destroyer! from thy shrouded throne
Look on our gift; this realm is all thine own!

Fair is the scene; its sweetness oft beguiled
From their dim paths the children of the wild;
The dark-haired maiden loved its grassy dells,
The feathered warrior claimed its wooded swells,
Still on its slopes the ploughman's ridges show
The pointed flints that left his fatal bow,
Chipped with rough art and slow barbarian toil, -
L...

I am sorry in the gladness
    Of the joys that crown my days,
For the souls that sit in sadness
    Or walk uninviting ways.

On the radiance of my labour
    That a loving fate bestowed,
Falls the shadow of my neighbour,
    Crushed beneath a thankless load.

As the canticle of pleasure
    From my lovelit altar rolls,
There is one discordant measure,
    As I think of homeless souls.

And I know that grim old story,
    Preached from pulpits, is not so,
For no God could sit in glory
    And see sinners writhe below.

In that great eternal Centre
    Where all human life has birth,
Boundless love and pity enter
    And flow downward to the earth.

And all souls in sin or sorrow
    Are but passing through the...

Oh, the brow that has never been shaded by care
The rosewreath of pleasure may smilingly wear,
And the heart that is wholly a stranger to gloom,
'Mid the din of existence may fearlessly bloom;
But the one that is blighted by sadness and pain,
And blighted too rudely to blossom again,
When its hold on a reed-like support is resigned.
Nor peace, nor composure, nor solace can find,
Nor strength to submit to the chastening rod,
Save only in stillness alone with its God!

And oh! if a blissful communion with Heaven
To earth-wearied spirits has ever been given,
If the loved and the distant, the lost and the dead,
Who smiled on our pathway a moment, and fled,
Who darkened our sunshine and saddened our mirth,
To prove that the soul has no home upon earth,
...

MORTAL

The world is full of selfishness and greed.
Lord, I would lave its sin.

SPIRIT

Yea, mortal, earth of thy good help has need.
Go cleanse THYSELF within.

MORTAL

Mine ear is hurt by harsh and evil speech.
I would reform men's ways.

SPIRIT

There is but one convincing way to teach.
Speak THOU but words of praise.

MORTAL

On every hand is wretchedness and grief,
Despondency and fear.
Lord, I would give my fellow men relief.

SPIRIT

Be, then, all hope, all cheer.

MORTAL

Lord, I look outward and grow sick at heart,
Such need of change I see.

SPIRIT

Mortal, look IN.    Do thy allotted part,
And leave the rest to ME.

        I

        IN NEW YORK

        He plays the deuce with my writing time,
        For the penny my sixth-floor neighbor throws;
        He finds me proud of my pondered rhyme,
        And he leaves me--well, God knows
        It takes the shine from a tunester's line
        When a little mate of the deathless Nine
        Pipes up under your nose!

        For listen, there is his voice again,
        Wistful and clear and piercing sweet.
        Where did the boy find such a strain
        To make a dead heart beat?
        And how in the name of care can he bear
        To jet such a fountain into the air
        In this gray gulch of a street?

        Tuscan slopes or the Piedmontese?
        Umbria under the Apennine?

'He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.' - St. John the Divine.

The Spirit says unto the churches,
    'Ere ever the churches began
I lived in the centre of Being -
    The life of the Purpose and Plan;
I flowed from the mind of the Maker
    Through nature to man.

'I sleep in the glow of the jewel,
    I wake in the sap of the tree,
I stir in the beast of the forest,
    I reason in man, and am free
To turn on the path of Ascension
    To the god yet to be.

'I was, and I am, and I will be;
    I live in each church and each faith
But yield to no bond and no fetter,
    I animate all with my breath;
I speak through the voice of the living
    And I speak after death.'

The Spirit says un...

Spirit of Earth! thy hand is chill:
I've felt its icy clasp;
And, shuddering, I remember still
That stony-hearted grasp.
Thine eye bids love and joy depart:
Oh, turn its gaze from me!
It presses down my shrinking heart;
I will not walk with thee!

"Wisdom is mine," I've heard thee say:
"Beneath my searching eye
All mist and darkness melt away,
Phantoms and fables fly.
Before me truth can stand alone,
The naked, solid truth;
And man matured by worth will own,
If I am shunned by youth.

"Firm is my tread, and sure though slow;
My footsteps never slide;
And he that follows me shall know
I am the surest guide."
Thy boast is vain; but were it true
That thou couldst safely steer
Life's rough and devious pathway through,
S...

Calm on the breast of Loch Maree
A little isle reposes;
A shadow woven of the oak
And willow o'er it closes.

Within, a Druid's mound is seen,
Set round with stony warders;
A fountain, gushing through the turf,
Flows o'er its grassy borders.

And whoso bathes therein his brow,
With care or madness burning,
Feels once again his healthful thought
And sense of peace returning.

O restless heart and fevered brain,
Unquiet and unstable,
That holy well of Loch Maree
Is more than idle fable!

Life's changes vex, its discords stun,
Its glaring sunshine blindeth,
And blest is he who on his way
That fount of healing findeth!

The shadows of a humbled will
And contrite heart are o'er it;
Go read its legend, "Trust In...

I saw in dream the spirits unbegot,
Veiled, floating phantoms, lost in twilight space;
For one the hour had struck, he paused; the place
Rang with an awful Voice:
            "Soul, choose thy lot!
Two paths are offered; that, in velvet-flower,
Slopes easily to every earthly prize.
Follow the multitude and bind thine eyes,
Thou and thy sons' sons shall have peace with power.
This narrow track skirts the abysmal verge,
Here shalt thou stumble, totter, weep and bleed,
All men shall hate and hound thee and thy seed,
Thy portion be the wound, the stripe, the scourge.
But in thy hand I place my lamp for light,
Thy blood shall be the witness of my Law,
Choose now for all the ages!"
            Then I saw
The unveiled spirit, grown divinely bright,
Choose t...

O God! my God! have mercy now.
I faint, I fall. Men say that Thou
Didst die for me, for such as me,
Patient of ill, and death, and scorn,
And that my sin was as a thorn
Among the thorns that girt Thy brow,
Wounding Thy soul.–That even now,
In this extremest misery
Of ignorance, I should require
A sign! and if a bolt of fire
Would rive the slumbrous summer noon
While I do pray to Thee alone,
Think my belief would stronger grow!
Is not my human pride brought low?
The boastings of my spirit still?
The joy I had in my free-will
All cold, and dead, and corpse-like grown?
And what is left to me but Thou,
And faith in Thee? Men pass me by;
Christians with happy countenances–
And children all seem full of Thee!
And women smile with saint-like ...

Here when the cloudless April days begin,
And the quaint crows flock thicker day by day,
Filling the forests with a pleasant din,
And the soiled snow creeps secretly away,
Comes the small busy sparrow, primed with glee,
First preacher in the naked wilderness,
Piping an end to all the long distress
From every fence and every leafless tree.

Now with soft slight and viewless artifice
Winter's iron work is wondrously undone;
In all the little hollows cored with ice
The clear brown pools stand simmering in the sun,
Frail lucid worlds, upon whose tremulous floors
All day the wandering water-bugs at will,
Shy mariners whose oars are never still,
Voyage and dream about the heightening shores.

The bluebird, peeping from the gnarlèd thorn,
Prattles upon...

Written on a blank leaf of his memoirs.


Dear friends, who read the world aright,
And in its common forms discern
A beauty and a harmony
The many never learn!

Kindred in soul of him who found
In simple flower and leaf and stone
The impulse of the sweetest lays
Our Saxon tongue has known,

Accept this record of a life
As sweet and pure, as calm and good,
As a long day of blandest June
In green field and in wood.

How welcome to our ears, long pained
By strife of sect and party noise,
The brook-like murmur of his song
Of nature's simple joys!

The violet' by its mossy stone,
The primrose by the river's brim,
And chance-sown daffodil, have found
Immortal life through him.

The sunrise on his bre...

Vast was the wealth I carried in life's pack -
    Youth, health, ambition, hope and trust; but Time
    And Fate, those robbers fit for any crime,
Stole all, and left me but the empty sack.
Before me lay a long and lonely track
    Of darkling hills and barren steeps to climb;
    Behind me lay in shadows the sublime
Lost lands of Love's delight.    Alack!    Alack!

Unwearied, and with springing steps elate,
    I had conveyed my wealth along the road.
    The empty sack proved now a heavier load:
I was borne down beneath its worthless weight.
I stumbled on, and knocked at Death's dark gate.
    There was no answer.    Stung by sorrow's goad
    I forced my way into that grim abode,
And laughed, and flung Life's empty sack to Fate.

Unknown ...

CHORUS OF SPIRITS:

FIRST SPIRIT:
Palace-roof of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!
Deep, immeasurable, vast,
Which art now, and which wert then
Of the Present and the Past,
Of the eternal Where and When,
Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever-canopying dome,
Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earth's company;
Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;
And green worlds that glide along;
And swift stars with flashing tresses;
And icy moons most cold and bright,
And mighty suns beyond the night,
Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,
Heaven! for thou art the abode
Of that Power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature see...