Flower Pieces and other poems By William Allingham: With two designs by Dante Gabriel Rossetti |
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AT A WINDOW. |
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 | Flower Pieces and other poems |  |
AT A WINDOW.
To ------
Search the round Earth, and Heavens afar,
Man is the highest thing you find:
Yet all the powers of all mankind
Drawn to a point, could never make
One scented little Jasmin-Star
Of these that by our window shake
As stirs the fitful evening wind,
Showing, in purple depth between
The frondage, Sirius glancing keen.
Man is the highest thing you find:
Yet all the powers of all mankind
Drawn to a point, could never make
One scented little Jasmin-Star
Of these that by our window shake
As stirs the fitful evening wind,
Showing, in purple depth between
The frondage, Sirius glancing keen.
Look back into the twilight room,
And see amid the tender gloom
Our favourite Picture glimmering rich,
Our dear Greek Goddess in her niche,
Our fifty priceless Books a-row,
And Music where she mildly waits
To open with a touch Heaven's gates.
Say hath not Art, man's proper power,
Its world of miracles to show?
The boundless world of star and flower,
All that exists, above, below,
Is chaos, blind and deaf and dumb,
Until within the Soul it come
(That essence of its gross), perceive
Itself at last, and instant weave
A Universe of Beauty, wrought
Of interflow, within, without,—
Soul's joy: which in its own fine ways
Art expresses and conveys.
And see amid the tender gloom
Our favourite Picture glimmering rich,
Our dear Greek Goddess in her niche,
Our fifty priceless Books a-row,
And Music where she mildly waits
To open with a touch Heaven's gates.
Say hath not Art, man's proper power,
Its world of miracles to show?
The boundless world of star and flower,
All that exists, above, below,
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Until within the Soul it come
(That essence of its gross), perceive
Itself at last, and instant weave
A Universe of Beauty, wrought
Of interflow, within, without,—
Soul's joy: which in its own fine ways
Art expresses and conveys.
How Nature hides her music-tones!
More deeply than her precious stones.
How we have found and set them! Nay,
To-night, Love, do not sing or play,
But improvise—A Starry Night,
And Beauty too is infinite:
Its source the Loving Soul, a Face
Like yours its choicest dwelling-place.
More deeply than her precious stones.
How we have found and set them! Nay,
To-night, Love, do not sing or play,
But improvise—A Starry Night,
And Beauty too is infinite:
Its source the Loving Soul, a Face
Like yours its choicest dwelling-place.
| Flower Pieces and other poems | |