Expectatio.
XXII.
A sweet exhaustion seems to hold
In spells of calm the shrouded eve:
The gorse itself a beamless gold
Puts forth:—yet nothing seems to grieve.
The dewy chaplets hang on air;
The willowy fields are silver-grey;
Sad odours wander here and there;—
And yet we feel that it is May.
Relaxed, and with a broken flow,
From dripping bowers low carols swell
In mellower, glassier tones, as though
They mounted through a bubbling well.
The crimson orchis scarce sustains
Upon its drenched and drooping spire
The burden of the warm soft rains;
The purple hills grow nigh and nigher.
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Nature, suspending lovely toils,
On expectations lovelier broods,
Listening, with lifted hand, while coils
The flooded rivulet through the woods.
She sees, drawn out in vision clear,
A world with summer radiance drest,
And all the glories of that year
Which sleeps within her virgin breast.
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XXIII.
Still on the gracious work proceeds;—
The good, great tidings preached anew
Yearly to green enfranchised meads,
And fire-topped woodlands flushed with dew.
Yon cavern's mouth we scarce can see;
Yon rock in gathering bloom lies meshed;
And all the wood-anatomy
In thickening leaves is over-fleshed.
That hermit oak which frowned so long
Upon the spring with barren spleen,
Yields to the holy Siren's song,
And bends above her goblet green.
Young maples, late with gold embossed,—
Lucidities of sun-pierced limes,
No more surprise us—merged and lost
Like prelude notes in deepening chimes.
Disordered beauties and detached
Demand no more a separate place:
The abrupt, the startling, the unmatched,
Submit to graduated grace;
While upward from the ocean's marge
The year ascends with statelier tread
To where the sun his golden targe
Finds, setting, on yon mountain's head.
Turris Eburnea.
XXIV.
This scheme of worlds, which vast we call,
Is only vast compared with man:
Compared with God, the One yet All,
Its greatness dwindles to a span.
A Lily with its isles of buds
Asleep on some unmeasured sea:—
O God, the starry multitudes,
What are they more than this to Thee?
Yet girt by Nature's petty pale
Each tenant holds the place assigned
To each in Being's awful scale:—
The last of creatures leaves behind
The abyss of nothingness: the first
Into the abyss of Godhead peers;
Waiting that vision which shall burst
In glory on the eternal years.
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Tower of our Hope! through thee we climb
Finite creation's topmost stair;
Through thee from Sion's height sublime
Towards God we gaze through purer air.
Infinite distance still divides
Created from Creative Power;
But all which intercepts and hides
Lies dwarfed by that surpassing Tower!
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XXV.
Who doubts that thou art finite? Who
Is ignorant that from Godhead's height
To what is loftiest here below
The interval is infinite?
O Mary! with that smile thrice-blest
Upon their petulance look down;—
Their dull negation, cold protest—
Thy smile will melt away their frown!
Show them thy Son! That hour their heart
Will beat and burn with love like thine;
Grow large; and learn from thee that art
Which communes best with things divine.
The man who grasps not what is best
In creaturely existence, he
Is narrowest in the brain; and least
Can grasp the thought of Deity.
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XXVI.
They seek not; or amiss they seek;—
The cold slight heart and captious brain:—
To Love alone those instincts speak
Whose challenge never yet was vain.
True Gate of Heaven! As light through glass,
So He who never left the sky
To this low earth was pleased to pass
Through thine unstained Virginity.
Summed up in thee our hearts behold
The glory of created things:—
From His, thy Son's, corporeal mould
Looks forth the eternal King of Kings!
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XXVII.
A sudden sun-burst in the woods,
But late sad Winter's palace dim!
O'er quickening boughs and bursting buds
Pacific glories shoot and swim.
As when some heart, grief-darkened long,
Conclusive joy by force invades—
So swift the new-born splendours throng;
Such lustre swallows up the shades.
The sun we see not; but his fires
From stem to stem obliquely smite,
Till all the forest aisle respires
The golden-tongued and myriad light.
The caverns blacken as their brows
With floral fire are fringed; but all
Yon sombre vault of meeting boughs
Turns to a golden fleece its pall,
As o'er it breeze-like music rolls.
O Spring, thy limit-line is crossed!
O Earth, some orb of singing Souls
Brings down to thee thy Pentecost!
Dominica Pentecostes.
XXVIII.
Clear as those silver trumps of old
That woke Judea's jubilee;
Strong as the breeze of morning, rolled
O'er answering woodlands from the sea,
That matutinal anthem vast
Which winds, like sunrise, round the globe,
Following the sunrise, far and fast,
And trampling on his fiery robe.
Once more the Pentecostal torch
Lights on the courses of the year:
The "upper chamber" of the Church
Is thrilled once more with joy and fear.
Who lifts her brow from out the dust?
Who fixes on a world restored
A gaze like Eve's, but more august?
Who bends it heaven-ward on her Lord?
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It is the Birthday of the Bride.
The new begins; the ancient ends:
From all the gates of Heaven flung wide
The promised Paraclete descends.
He who o'er-shadowed Mary once
O'ershades Humanity to-day;
And bids her fruitful prove in sons
Co-heritors with Christ for aye.