 | Poems by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman |  |
26
Sonnets.
[I. The starry flower, the flower-like stars that fade]
The starry flower, the flower-like stars that fadeAnd brighten with the daylight and the dark,—
The bluet in the green I faintly mark,
And glimmering crags with laurel overlaid,
Even to the Lord of light, the Lamp of shade,
Shine one to me,—the least, still glorious made
As crownèd moon, or heaven's great hierarch.
And, so, dim grassy flower, and night-lit spark,
Still move me on and upward for the True;
Seeking through change, growth, death, in new and old.
The full in few, the statelier in the less,
With patient pain; always remembering this,—
His hand, who touched the sod with showers of gold,
Stippled Orion on the midnight blue.
27
[II. And so, as this great sphere now turning slow]
And so, as this great sphere (now turning slowUp to the light from that abyss of stars,
Now wheeling into gloom through sunset bars)—
With all its elements of form and flow,
And life in life; where crowned, yet blind; must go
The sensible king,—is but a Unity
Compressed of motes impossible to know;
Which worldlike yet in deep analogy,
Have distance, march, dimension, and degree;
So the round earth—which we the world do call—
Is but a grain in that that mightiest swells,
Whereof the stars of light are particles,
As ultimate atoms of one infinite Ball,
On which God moves, and treads beneath his feet the All!
| Poems by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman | |