 | The bird and the bell, with other poems |  |
291
THE GARDEN (CONTINUED).
Is there no praise of God amid the bowersOf summer idleness? Still must we toil
And think, and tease the conscience, and so soil
With over-careful fingering the flowers
That blow within the garden of the heart?
Still must we be machines for grinding out
Thin prayers and moralisms? Much I doubt,
Pale priest of a thorn-girded church, thy part
Is small in this wide breathing universe.
Least can I find thy title and thy worth
Here, where with myriad chords the musical earth
Is rhyming to the enraptured poet's verse.
Better thy cowl befits thy cloister's gloom;
Its shadow blots the garden and its bloom.
1852
| The bird and the bell, with other poems | |