University of Virginia Library

THE SONG OF THE SILENCE

O, heavens, the eloquent song of the silence!
Asleep lay the sun in the vines, on the sod,
And asleep in the sun lay the green-girdled islands,
As rock'd to their rest in the cradle of God.
God's poet is silence! His song is unspoken,
And yet so profound, so loud, and so far,
It fills you, it thrills you with measures unbroken,
And as soft, and as fair, and as far as a star.
The shallow seas moan. From the first they have mutter'd
And mourn'd, as a child, and have wept at their will . . .
The poems of God are too grand to be utter'd:
The dreadful deep seas they are loudest when still.