THE RELIGION OF SOLITUDE.
“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not
------ this is none other but the house of God, and
this is the gate of heaven.”—Gen. xxviii. 16, 17.
Lone nature is no loneliness to me,
Her solitude makes my society,
For there I listen to a Voice that seems
Like heaven-tones heard by prophets in their dreams.
Serenely awful o'er my trancèd soul
I hear the music of th' Almighty roll,
And each deep cadence oft appears to tell,—
“My Hand o'ershades thee, though invisible!”
Thus have I felt, in regions wild and lone
Where Nature loves to rear her rocky throne,
Where nought intrudes to mar the tranquil mind,
And nothing murmurs but the mountain-wind,
Or, happy brooks which down the hillocks play
And sing, like birds in sunbeams far away,
Or, glancing bees that o'er the wood-born flowers
Whirl their gay dance, and hum away the hours.
Yet, perfect solitude there cannot be,
Since all around us acts Divinity;
Like space to body, so is God to soul,
Who all created, and contains the whole.
The hush of Nature may be holy calm
Breathed by blest Angels, when they spread the balm
Of beauteous quiet o'er the heart of things,
And veil the landscape with their viewless wings.
When wearied Jacob, pillow'd on the stone,
Slumber'd at dewy night, he seem'd alone;
What Sense beheld, no sacred token found
That Haran's desert was a haunted ground:
But, when a dream-power purified his glance,
His eye unseal'd, survey'd in wondrous trance
Angels ascending and descending there,
And when he woke—he trembled into prayer!
And so, round us may guardian Spirits move
To ply unseen soft ministries of love,
While we walk careless o'er the greenwood sod,
Nor rev'rence nature as instinct with God.
Then read creation with religious eye,
If God and angels thou wouldst there descry,
To which alone the Patriarch's dream is given,—
A mystic ladder linking earth with heaven.
