 | Three Hundred Sonnets |  |
163
RYDAL'S BARD.
For there, by hill and dale, in sun or shade,He ‘communed with the universe’ in love;
‘The deep foundations of his mind’ were laid,
Sphered in their midst, on all around, above:
He read God's heart in all His hand hath made:
Then, in the majesty of simple truth,
To man's dim mind he showed the mind of God
Lustrous and lovely, ‘full of pity and ruth’
For high and low, the sunbeam—and the sod!
So did he teach in age, as erst in youth,—
To turn away from passion's lurid light,
And yearn on purer things of lowlier birth,
Pure because lowly,—which, in God's own sight,
As in his servants', are the pearls of earth.
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