How the sun’s rays, golden-roselike,
O’er the ocean brightly gleam!
Every tree is green and glittering,
And enamell’d all things seem.
On the plain yon lambkins sporting
Are like alabaster white;
O how natural and perfect
Nature seemeth to the sight!
Earth and heaven alike are teeming
With my glorious majesty,
And through long and endless ages
Man will praise and worship me.
6.
The stuff out of which a poem is wrought
Is not to be suck’d from the finger;
No God created the world from nought
Any more than an earthly singer.
’Twas mud primeval that form’d the source
Whence the body of man I created,
And from the ribs of man in due course
Fair woman I separated.
The heavens I form’d from out of the earth,
And angels from women completed;
The raw material first gets its worth
From being artist’cally treated.
7.
The chiefest reason why I made
The earth, I will confess with gladness:
Within my soul, like fiery madness,
A burning call to do so play’d.