by way of silencing the agnostic's prating against God. Hear him:
"Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies-- Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower,--but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is."
Here follow a few, among many, very many, delicious references to the out-of-door world we name nature, as explanatory of the indoor world we call soul:
"Who make it seem more sweet to be The little life on bank and brier, The bird that pipes his lone desire And dies unheard within his tree."
"A thousand suns will stream on thee, A thousand moons will quiver; But not by thee my steps shall be, Forever and forever."
"Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale."
"I saw that every morning, far withdrawn, Beyond the darkness and the cataract, God made himself an awful rose of dawn, Unheeded."
"There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou go by."
"As through the land at eve we went, And pluck'd the ripen'd ears, We fell out, my wife and I,-- O we fell out, I know not why, And kiss'd again with tears.
For when we came where lies the child We lost in other years, There above the little grave,-- O there above the little grave, We kiss'd again with tears."
"Set in a cataract on an island-crag, When storm is on the heights of the long hills."
"Tall as a figure lengthen'd on the sand When the tide ebbs in sunshine."
"Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea; The cloud may stoop from heaven, and take the shape, With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape; But O too fond, when have I answered thee? Ask me no more."
"And she, as one that climbs a peak to gaze O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night."
"That like a broken purpose wastes in air."
"To rest beneath the clover sod, That takes the sunshine and the rains, Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God."
"So be it: there no shade can last In that deep dawn behind the tomb, But clear from marge to marge shall bloom The eternal landscape of the past."
"But Summer on the steaming floods, And Spring that swells the narrow brooks, And Autumn, with a noise of rooks, That gather in the waning woods."