Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Each morning as I thread my accustom'd way,
This heaven of beauty in her face I meet—
Soft Grecian lines that put Art to despair,
And eyes that give the thankless stones their light,
Which is to me a heavenly secret still.—

She comes to worship at the Roman shrine;
'Tis all I know; for I am nought to her!
And what is she to me? More than I know.

O not the sweet exchange of love for love!
For I have wealth of that, and crave no more.
I seek not to awake one slumbering pulse
In that rapt being, raise one lash to steal
The fringèd mystery beneath those lids:
An unapproach'd divinity be she,
Now and for ever, name and home, all, all
Within the mystic circle. But the joy
Of passing in her beauty—that is mine.
To me she is the bright bow 'mid the storm,
The star that crosses the blue gulfs in clouds,
The bud awaking from its winter dream,
Or aught of sweet ineffable surprise
That leaves the gazer touch'd with light from Heaven.—
For we should know all beauty is of God—
The underlying presence gleaming through
The outward forms. We may not understand,
By any lesser theory, how this
Fine ecstasy of beauty finds the soul.
The minster bell's deep boom strikes on my ear:
It strikes a deeper note amid my thoughts.
Can mere vibrations of surrounding air,
Outbeaten from the steeple's brazen lips,
Breaking on cartilage and nerve—can these,
Material as they are, or seem to be,
Mingle with spirit, and grow thought? Ah, no!

They are the scabbards for the gleaming steel
That so mysteriously cuts to the quick.—
And when the organ's myriad lips create,
Of air, the warbling miracle which finds
Strange concord in the soul, O is it air
That pierces to extremities of sense,
And works this wonder on the guest within?
Ah—call me not irreverent—'tis God,
The mystery of harmony and air!—
So, when our gazing wonder is absorb'd
Within the bosom of a simple flower,
Is it the delicately-blended hues
And the delicious odour that enchant?
Ay, these. But what are these? O think, and think!
The very God of Heaven is in the flower.

We cannot get beyond the fact of beauty:
It is to be adored, not analysed:
We seek to analyse, and it recedes
Into the deeper beauty. For in truth
The merest thing in Nature is a spirit:
All outward forms of beauty take their form
And beauty from the inward. Can it be
That when the outward forms have gone to dust
The inward are within the world of spirits?—
No empty world is that, but full as this
With all that we deem excellent.—And so,
'Tis heaven to me to meet this beauteous face—
The angel in the woman—Heaven indeed,
To think that earthly beauty may not die,

But deepen to the Heavenly—to feel
That we may give, without the fear of loss,
Unstinted heart to everything we love.—
Our loves are only half lived: there is still
Some timid apprehension of an end
That reins the heart, and breaks its full free bound.

O glorious earth! how much there is in thee
To love and worship! How much more would come
Could we dispel all petty fears and take,
With trustful hearts, the fulness of each day,
Believing that the soul, divinely fill'd
With love, can never lose the things it loves!
For seeming loss is still a deeper gain;
The object passes more into the mind,
And mind alone possesses. When death comes,
It lets us more and more back to the things
Which now we mourn as lost.—Ah, I have left
The dim mysterious woods, the brooding hills,
The daisied meadows and the haunted streams,
To rack my brains for bread, miles deep in streets.
Yet oft amidst my toil, far through my soul,
The woods, the hills, the meadows and the streams
Come robed in brighter glory than of yore;
In sleep, the prototype of death, they come
With an intenser beauty—or I go
In rapture back to them: and so when death
Gives free emancipation, I shall soon—
Ay, very soon—be where I long to be.

O nothing can be lost; and we can make
All things our own by loving them. What need
Of fearing or repining? Even I
Might be a very lord of Earth and Time.—
Away, all cant about position, wealth!
A thought dissolves it. Greatly live, each, all;
For God's true wealth is free to each and all—
The wealth of thought, the heritage of love.