Praise! that there burst on my unfolding heart The coloured radiance of leafy June, With choirs of song-birds perfected in art, And nightingales beneath the summer moon-- Praise! that this beauty, an unravished bride Doth hold her lover still; Doth hide and beckon, laugh at me, and hide Upon each grassy hill.
Praise! that I know the dear capricious sky In every infinitely varied mood-- Yet under her maternal wings can lie The smallest chick among her countless brood! Praise! that I hear the strong winds wildly race Their chariots on the sea, But feel them lift my hair and stroke my face Softly and tenderly!
Praise! for the joy and gladness thou didst send, When I have sat in gracious fellowship In firelight for an evening with a friend. When wine and magic entered at the lip! For laughter which the fates can overthrow Thy mercy doth accord-- To Thee, who didst my godlike joy bestow, I lift my glass, O Lord!
Praise! that a lady leaning from her height, A lady pitiful, a tender maid, A queen majestical unto my sight, Spoke words of love to me, and sweetly laid Her hand within my own unworthy hand! (Rise, soul, to greet thy guest, Mysterious love, whom none shall understand, Though love be all confessed!)
Praise! that upon my bent and bleeding back Was stretched some share of Thy redeeming cross, Some poverty as largess for my lack, Some loss that shall prevent my utter loss! Praise! that thou gavest me to keep joy sweet The sanguine salt of pain! Praise! for the weariness of questing feet That else might quest in vain!
Dear exile from the hurrying crowd, At work I muse to you aloud; Thought on my anvil softens, glows, And I forget our art has foes; For life, the mother of beauty, seems A joyous sleep with waking dreams. Then the toy armoury of the brain Opining, judging, looks as vain As trowels silver gilt for use Of mayors and kings, who have to lay Foundation stones in hope they may Be honoured for walls others build. I, in amicable muse, With fathomless wonder only filled, Whisper over to your ear Listening two hundred odd miles north, And give thought chase that, were you here, Our talk would never run to earth.
Man can answer no momentous question: Whence comes his spirit? Has it lived before? Reason fails; hot springs of feeling spout Their snowy columns high in the dim land Of his surmise--violent divine decisions That often rule him: and at times he views Portraits of places he has never been to, Yet more minute and vivid than remembrance, Of boyhood homes, sail between sleep and waking Like some mirage, refuting all experience With topsy-turvy ships, That steals by in dead calms through tropic haze: And many a man in his climacteric years, Thoughts and remembered words have roused from sleep With knowledge that he lacked on lying down: And I, lapped in a trance of reverie, doubt Some spore of episodes Anterior far beyond this body's birth, Dispersed like puffs of dust impalpable, Wind-carried round this globe for centuries, May, breathed with common air, yet swim the blood, And striking root in this or that brain, raise Imaginations unaccountable; One such seems half-implied in all I am, And many times re-pondered shapes like this: