University of Virginia Library

Thy beauty, Nature, hath a chorded spell
Responsively for tones of feeling tuned,
In moments deep of myst'ry and of mind.
How often when the human world looks harsh
And loveless; when no eye reflects the ray
Of sorrow, beaming mildly from our own;
When, darkly girdled by a zone of thought,
Apart, and voiceless in our souls we move,
Thy scenes of calm, thy solitudes profound,
Like mute interpretations, seem to wear
An outward mirror of the mood we feel!
Then silence to the soul of thought appeals
With more than language; thy maternal hush
Upon the heart's strange fever falls, like dew.
Sublime in thy sublimities we grow,
And lose the littleness of earth and man
Amid the vastness of those speaking Forms
Of grace, and Grandeurs which Thy throne surround.
Soon may the mind, by such entrancement, soar,
And from the vileness of this vexing world
A while set free, imbibe a nobler life,
Holding dim converse with all shapes and hues
Which body forth the Beautiful and Bright
Within, or image forth the mood we feel.
How eloquent the everlasting Hills
Will oft appear! proclaiming with their peaks
Majestic, Him whose fiat bade them stand
Like monuments to Ages long no more:
Or haply, in the heart's deep-thoughted hours
Musing beside an immemorial Sea
On some poetic shore, while wave on wave
In hollow thunder lisps th' Almighty Name,
How strangely does electric nature thrill
Through forms of matter on the feeling mind!
As though the elements, by love inspired,
Interpret what our mental dream enjoys.

And did not He, a beauteous symbol trace
Between the gladness of his free-born soul
And Nature's jubilee of sun and breeze,
Heaven-guarded Luther! on his homeward track
From that proud Diet, where a miner's son
O'erawed the princes in their Hall of pride,
And sent the arrows of resistless truth
From God's own quiver through the heart of Rome?
The crystal radiance of a vernal noon
Around him deepen'd; hark! from forest-boughs
Amid whose branches play'd the truant breeze,
A quiring populace of birds resound
Their tuneful joy; or, jubilant with life,
Hymn wild hosannahs in Creation's ear;
And, high o'er all, th' imperial Lord of day
Eyes, like a parent, the rejoicing earth
Beneath him basking, in a sleep of smiles.
'Twas thus, the countenance of Nature gave
A beaming welcome, bright to Luther's heart.
All elements his counterpart assumed;
Meadow and tree intelligently wore
An aspect, touch'd with some respondent hue
To all within him. In that mood intense,
His rapture was religion, while the mind
Revell'd in radiance, like a lark which sings
In sunshine, or a bee that hums in bloom.

His joy was God experienced; and himself
In heart, was living scripture, for the glow
And gladness felt, were letters turn'd to life,
In calm almighty through the bosom breathed.
Hence his free soul by cheering grace inspired,
Rose like a sail before the gallant wind;
Though papal Bloodhounds for his spirit yell'd,
A peace beyond disturbing fiends to mar,
His conscience bosom'd: while the tempest raged,
The swelling purpose of his mind, unmoved,
Daunted each danger; as the perill'd bark
Bounds into harbour through a battling sea
And in calm sunshine dries its dripping sail.