University of Virginia Library

THE SUN.

Eye of thy Maker, which hath never slept
Since the Eternal Voice from chaos said
“Let there be light!” great monarch of the day,
How shall our dark, cold strain, fit welcome speak,
Fit praise? Lo! the poor pagan, kneeling, views
Thy burning chariot, to the highest sky
Roll on resistless, and with awe exclaims,
“The god! The god!” And shall we blame his creed,
For whom no heaven hath open'd, to reveal
A better faith? Where else could he descry
Such image of the Deity? such power
With goodness blending? From the reedy grass,
Wiry and sparse, that in the marshes springs,
To the most tremulous and tender shoot
Of the mimosa, from the shrinking bud
Nursed in the greenhouse, to the gnarled oak
Notching a thousand winters on its trunk,
All are the children of thy love, oh sun!
And by thy smile sustain'd.
Unresting orb!
Pursuest thou, mid the labyrinth of suns,
Some pathway of thine own? Say, dost thou sweep,
With all thy marshall'd planets in thy train,
In grand procession on, through boundless space,
Age after age, towards some mysterious point
Mark'd by His finger, who doth write thy date,
Thy “mene—mene—tekel,” on the walls
Of the blue vault that spans our universe?
—But Thou, who rul'st the sun, the astonish'd soul
Shrinks as it takes Thy name. Almost it fears
To be forgotten, mid the myriad worlds
Which thou hast made.
And yet the sickliest leaf
That drinks thy dew reproves our unbelief.
The frail field-lily, which no florist's eye
Regards, doth win a glorious garniture,
To kings denied. So, while to dust we bow,
Needy and poor, oh! bid us learn the lore
Graved on the humblest lily's leaf, as deep
As on you disk of fire—to trust in Thee.