FAITH.
THE spreading circle of the known
That Science strives to bound with laws
Is but a glowing sparkle thrown
From God, the radiant central cause.
His mystery is vaster far
Than knowledge is or e’er can be;
The wheel of Evolution’s car
Rolls onward through eternity.
A stilly voice forever sounds
The lapses of our doubt between:
“Seek not to give Religion bounds,
Nor limit Faith by forces seen.”
PLATO.
ATHENIAN prophet of the soaring mind!
What new lamp burns so brightly as his old?
He changed Philosophy from dross to gold
By poet’s alchemy; and he combined
Egypt and Ind and the Hellenic States
With all the knowledge Cadmus’ letters hold,
In Logic’s crucible to be refined;
He opened Speculation’s splendid gates
To Western ways where Science after trod;
A reign of sweeter Ethics he foretold,
Renouncing Zeus for a diviner God;
And, unaffrighted by the awful Fates,
In starry sandals of Religion shod,
From pagan darkness Plato led mankind.
DANTE.
AFTER READING “PARADISO.”
HIS sacred Muse, on soaring rapture’s wings,
Aspired the radiant empyrean high,
And bore to earth the splendor of the sky!
Durante’s spirit to my senses brings
The excessive beauty of transcendent things
That thrill imagination’s ear and eye;
With joy I hear the blissful carolings
Of angel hosts in robes of dazzling white;
My soul partakes the poet’s ecstasy!
Through all my meditation and my prayer
Steals reminiscence of the Stream of Light,
And of the Rose unutterably fair,—
And O! the threefold glory of The One,
The Love that moves the circling stars and sun!
WAGNER’S KAISER MARCH.
TO THEODORE THOMAS.
WHAT diapasons from the hush profound
Thy magic wand, O Master, summons forth
To laud imperial Kaiser, robed and crowned!
Hail! multitudinous music of the North!
Titanic Wagner’s soul informs the sound!
Ho! instruments triumphant, trump and drum,
And cymbal clanging where the troopers come!
The Gothic valor now is set to score;
I hear the tramp of Saxon thought unbound,
The victor’s cry, disdaining death or wound,—
I hear the saber ring, the cannon roar!
This is the throbbing tune for Halfred’s rhyme,
The symphony of glorious war sublime,
Valhalla’s martial joy forevermore!