The Poetry of Real Life A New Edition, Much Enlarged and Improved. By Henry Ellison |
AGAINST OVERSEVERE RELIGION, ALIAS NONE. |
The Poetry of Real Life | ||
AGAINST OVERSEVERE RELIGION, ALIAS NONE.
The world is not a hermit's cell—e'en byThe bare rock, where th' Ascetic seeks repose,
From what he call's life's conflicts and vain throes,
By vanity supplanting vanity,
The flower cheers his sense and charms his eye;
Seeming, with silent comment, to expose
His joyless creed, and teach him, as it grows
In loveliness, the mild theology
Of Nature! were this Earth a wilderness,
Then haply we in such a creed might trace
A fitness; but its wealth and loveliness
Are such, that she doth Solitude displace
With songs of joyance, and with flowers dress
The waste, that Man may smile, and love her face!
The Poetry of Real Life | ||