THE PROBLEM. I LIKE a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure? Not from a vain or shallow thought The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Up from the burning core below, - The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew; The conscious stone to beauty grew. Know'st thou what wove yon wood bird's nest Painting with morn each annual cell? And Morning opes with haste her lids, O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, And granted them an equal date These temples grew as grows the grass; The passive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned; And the same power that reared the shrine, Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. Ever the fiery Pentecost Girds with one flame the countless host, Trances the heart through chanting choirs, And through the priest the mind inspires. The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken ; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost. TO RHEA. THEE, dear friend, a brother soothes, Which tarnish not, but purify To light which dims the morning's eye. I have come from the spring-woods, From the fragrant solitudes; Listen what the poplar-tree And murmuring waters counselled me. If with love thy heart has burned ; If thy love is unreturned; Hide thy grief within thy breast, |