All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view i Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves : Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine; I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chaunt, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt, A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance, Languor cannot be : Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest-but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream; Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, The world should listen then, as I am listening now. This, again, is true poetry, yet he who wrote these exquisite verses wrote also passages too blasphemous to be read by any religious man without a shudder ;-another proof that poetry itself has no relationship to religious feeling. Let me now give you one or two examples of poetry joined with religious feeling; but this is not because poetry has any connection with it, but because the mind of the poet is religious, and consequently everything connected with him becomes so. Take the verses of Keble for Christmas Day : What sudden blaze of song Spreads o'er th' expanse of heaven? In waves of light it thrills along, "Glory to God!" from yonder central fire Flows out the echoing lay beyond the starry quire; Like circles widening round Upon a clear blue river, Orb after orb, the wondrous sound Is echoed on for ever: Glory to God on high, on earth be peace, And love towards men of love-salvation and release. Here we have not only expanding light and spreading waves, but we have them as the messengers of God, carrying the glad tidings of salvation through the world. And with true poetic feeling the cold grey garb of winter is taken from the river by the introduction of the little word "blue," which represents it to us as sleeping beneath a sky of June. In the third line of the first verse, had the word "swells" been substituted for "thrills," so that the line would have read "In waves of light it swells along," it would have given us a truer representation of the motion of the waves, and also of that rapturous yet dreamy joy which music and song can produce in the soul. Again take the following verses from the same author: The Pascal moon above Seems like a saint to rove, Left shining in the world with Christ alone; Below, the lake's still face Sleeps sweetly in th' embrace Of mountains terrac'd high with mossy stone. Or choose thee out a cell In Kedron's storied dell, Beside the springs of love that never die; The chill night blast to feel, And watch the moon that saw thy Master's agony. This is not the moon of the man without religious feeling, that "looks a spirit or a spirit's world," nor the "orbed maiden" treading with unseen feet the great fields of space; but it becomes the saint watching with the Redeemer, and pouring soothing light upon his agony. Here again, perhaps, the substitution of the word "moaning" for "chill night" would have been an improvement. The fifth line of the second verse would then read thus-"The moaning blast to feel;" and the cold uncomfortable feeling of the chill night would be removed, and we should have in its stead the breath of the universe expressing audibly its grief for its suffering Lord. Again, there is much poetry, as well as religious feeling, in the "Evening Hymn :" Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear! It is not night if Thou be near; To hide Thee from Thy servant's eyes: for we have the clear and "dewy morn" vividly imaged, as well as the cloudless life of the Christian, bright with the Sun of Righteousness. My last quotation shall be from Pollok, one full of the deepest religious feeling and the truest poetry: it is from his "Course of Time." Book 5. It was an eve of autumn's holiest mood; The corn fields, bathed in Cynthia's silver light, Her Maker. Now and then, the aged leaf On vale and lake, on wood and mountain high, I would say a few words, ere I close, to those who feel the spirit of poetry within giving them a keen relish for the beautiful. Mistake it not for religious feeling; it is not that, and has no relationship to it. Cultivate it for the innocent natural feelings it can inspire. The earth will be like another earth to you, if you look upon it with a poet's eye. Is it nothing to gaze on the starry heavens until the soul is filled with wonder-to float on the crimson hues of sunset-to rest on that one lone cloud at eventide-to leap with the morning's lightning-to ride on the crest-wave of the ocean-to listen to the music of the wild waves, or the dash of the breakers? Is it nothing to climb the "trackless mountain all alone"-to hang above the chasm and look down into its depths-to see the spanning rainbow, and hear the rush of the cataract to tread the ledge-path of the precipice till the brain is well nigh sick, not with giddiness, but delight; and, while there is yet a height untrodden, to hear the whispers of that mysterious voice which cries "Excelsior!" and to feel a spirit within answering to the call; and then at last to stand upon that mountain top surrounded only by immensity and God? Is it nothing to hear music in the brook's murmurs-to see a smile in the bending flower, and feel nature speaking to the inmost soul? Is there no joy to you in all this, or any of this? Ah! then you know not what poetry means; and probably you never will. If these feelings are not implanted by nature, they cannot be acquired, for the poet is born, not made. But there is something you may have which is not yours by nature-something nature has not implanted, but which yet may be acquired, and it is something better than all that of which I have been speaking; for that of which I have spoken will pass away, but this will not. What, then, is this something better which may be acquired? -this something which is better than the grand, and |