University of Virginia Library

SONNETS CHIEFLY SUGGESTED BY ST. AUGUSTINE

5
WHAT WE LOVE IN LOVING GOD

What love I when I love Thee, O my God?
Not corporal beauty, nor the limb of snow,
Nor of loved light the white and pleasant flow,
Nor manna showers, nor streams trickling abroad,
Nor flowers of Heaven, nor small stars of the sod.
Not these, my God, I love, who love Thee so.
Yet love I something better than I know:—
A certain light on a more golden road;
A sweetness, not of honey or the hive;
A scent, a music, and a blossoming,
Fair, fadeless, undiminish'd, never dim;
Eternal, timeless, placeless, without gyve,
The unknown desire of each created thing—
This, this is what I love in loving Him.

6
This, this is what I love, and what is this?

This, this is what I love, and what is this?
I ask'd the beautiful earth, who said—‘Not I.’
I ask'd the depths, and the immaculate sky
And all the spaces said—‘Not He, but His.’
And so, like one who scales a precipice,
Height after height, I scaled the flaming ball
Of the great universe—yea, pass'd o'er all
The world of thought, which so much higher is.
Then I exclaimed—‘To whom is mute all murmur
Of phantasy, of nature, and of art,
Who seeks not earthly sweetnesses to win,
He, than articulate language hears a firmer
And grander meaning in his own deep heart.’
O voiceless voice—‘My servant, enter in!’

7
IDEAS FADING IN THE MEMORY

Quickly they vanish to a land unlit,
Things for which no man cares to smile or mourn,
Forgotten in the place where they were born;
Each hath a marvellous history unwrit,
A fathomless river floweth over it.
Quickly they fade, with no more traces worn
Than shadows flying over fields of corn
Wear, as in soft processional they flit.
The thought (much like the children of our youth)
Doth often die before us, and presents,
With tints much faded and with lines effaced,
The very semblance of the monuments
To which we are approaching still in sooth,
Although the brass and marble do not waste.

8
REVIVAL OF MEMORY

Sadly, O sage, thine images are told.
Think we of cornfields, where again there fall
At Memory's touch, that is so magical,
All the long lights that ever rippled gold
Across their surface, all the manifold
Wavelets of tremulous shadow; and withal
Through doors and windows of a haunted hall
Those buried children of the days of old,
Those evanescent children of dead years,
Clouded or glorious, glide into the room,
Sudden as yellow leaves drop from the tree,
And all the moulder'd imagery reappears,
And all the letter'd lines are fair to see,
And all the legend lives above the tomb?

9
MARVELS OF MEMORY

Strange dying, resurrection stranger yet!
In the deep chamber, Memory, let me dwell,
Folded in a recess ineffable.
Lo! in that silent chamber sometimes set,
I music hear, and breath of violet
(Though flowers be none within a mile to smell)
From breath of lily I can finely tell,
And I with joy remember my regret,
And I, regretful, think how I was glad.
O men! who roam to see world-famous tracts,
Visits to many a lovely land ye weave
In looms of fancy—but yourselves ye leave,
Yourselves more marvellous than all Alps snow-clad,
All great white wonders of the cataracts.