Nothing we see but means our good, The stars have us to bed; Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws. All things unto our flesh are kind, Each thing is full of duty: Waters united are our navigation; Distinguished, our habitation;" Below, our drink; above, our meat; Both are our cleanliness. Hath one such beauty? Then how all things are neat! More servants wait on Man Than he'll take notice of. In every path Since, then, my God, thou hast So brave a palace built, O, dwell in it, That it may dwell with thee at last! Till then, afford us so much wit, That, as the world serves us, we may serve thee; And both thy servants be. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air 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 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not; Like a highborn maiden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower; Like a glowworm golden In a dell of dew, Its aerial hue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view; Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-wingèd 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 triumphant chant, 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 shapes of sky or plain? 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, 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 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. THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. — Byron. A FABLE. SONNET ON CHILLON. ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless mind! |