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The artist hath his Paradise to guard,
The poet in the strife
Hath love’s behest to serve, and love’s reward,
And I fulfil my life.
The joy of straining every nerve is mine,
Of long-enduring strength,
Even the prophet’s rapture, fruit divine,
Foretold, foreseen at length.
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Oh beauty hath her roses, diamonds, pearls,
Music of mystic bars—
Love hath her heart of hearts, whose flower unfurls,
And truth her heaven of stars.
Oh childhood hath its Eden of delight,
With peace and dreaming blest;
Youth hath its consecration, promise bright,
And manhood hath its quest,
Its service to accomplish—ease foregone,
And all applause hushed down,
Evaded—heard with shame—hard pressing on—
Too ardent for a crown.
How should he care for Fame, whom only truth
Could call and recompense—
The ever-far ideal of my youth,
Desired with thirst intense?
For Fame? I count my comrades where they stand
The laughing stock of years,
The heroes of their scorn, alone,—and grand,—
My comrades and compeers.
This is the garden where the flower grew
That fills the earth with fragrance—this its home,—
An island full of breezes off the foam,
To whom the west-wind bears the ocean’s due:
This is the garden where the temperate blue
Is tenderly near, and where the burrowing gnome
Unearths continual wealth: and where the loam,
Tilled by the frost awakes with vigour new,—
A land of morning, busy with the hum
Of multitudinous life: a land of streams,
Of meadows and of mountains greatly dumb,
That blaze as altar-piles i’ the slant sunbeams;
A land of deeds, to whom the messages come,
Of new emprise, and heaven-directed dreams.
All joy is praise, and all desire is prayer;
And as we pray we grow, and praise is new life ever—
They are the meat and drink of the angel-soul, the Son of the wonderful God.
The wonderful God—(list you)—I, who wander from hope to dream,
Turn at the touch of fear my eyes to my soul, and remember
The meaning of words that grow dim, and of these, “Our Father.”
The hills and the great free plain and the boisterous wind I love,
Grass and clover and larks, and the foam in the blue,
Roses and hearts of roses, and lips and longing of hearts—
All that ever I loved, and that ever was loved, and loved—
All come near at the song of the words, “Our Father;”
And nothings vanish away when Love says low, “Our Father.”
For the soul saith, all that is beautiful is true, and cannot fail—
And of all earth’s beautiful visions Love loveth the Dream of God.