Spirituality

The spirit of freedom is born of the mountains,
In gorge and in cañon it hovers and dwells;
Pervading the torrents and crystalline fountains,
    Which dash through the valleys and forest clad dells.

The spirit of freedom, so firm and impliant,
    Is borne on the breeze, whose invisible waves
Descend from the mountain peaks, stern and defiant--
    Created for freemen, but never for slaves.

'Twas on the Red Sea coast, at morn, we met
The venerable man;[1] a healthy bloom
Mingled its softness with the vigorous thought
That towered upon his brow; and when he spoke
'Twas language sweetened into song--such holy sounds
As oft, they say, the wise and virtuous hear,
Prelusive to the harmony of heaven,
When death is nigh; and still, as he unclosed[2]
His sacred lips, an odor, all as bland
As ocean-breezes gather from the flowers
That blossom in Elysium, breathed around,
With silent awe we listened, while he told
Of the dark veil which many an age had hung
O'er Nature's form, till, long explored by man,
The mystic shroud grew thin and luminous,
And glimpses of that heavenly form shone through:--
Of magic wonders, that were known and ...

The billows swell, the winds are high,
Clouds overcast my wintry sky;
Out of the depths to thee I call, -
My fears are great, my strength is small.


O Lord, the pilot’s part perform,
And guard and guide me through the storm,
Defend me from each threatening ill,
Control the waves, - say, “Peace, be still.”


Amidst the roaring of the sea,
My soul still hangs her hope on thee;
Thy constant love, thy faithful care,
Is all that saves me from despair.


Dangers of every shape and name
Attend the followers of the Lamb,
Who leave the world’s deceitful shore,
And leave it to return no more.


Though tempest-toss’d and half a wreck,
My Saviour through the floods I seek;
Let neither winds nor stormy main
Force back...

In my mind's eye a Temple, like a cloud
Slowly surmounting some invidious hill,
Rose out of darkness: the bright Work stood still:
And might of its own beauty have been proud,
But it was fashioned and to God was vowed
By Virtues that diffused, in every part,
Spirit divine through forms of human art:
Faith had her arch, her arch, when winds blow loud,
Into the consciousness of safety thrilled;
And Love her towers of dread foundation laid
Under the grave of things; Hope had her spire
Star-high, and pointing still to something higher
Trembling I gazed, but heard a voice it said,
"Hell-gates are powerless Phantoms when 'we' build."

To see the clouds his spirit yearned toward so
Over new mountains piled and unploughed waves,
Back of old-storied spires and architraves
To watch Arcturus rise or Fomalhaut,

And roused by street-cries in strange tongues when day
Flooded with gold some domed metropolis,
Between new towers to waken and new bliss
Spread on his pillow in a wondrous way:

These were his joys. Oft under bulging crates,
Coming to market with his morning load,
The peasant found him early on his road
To greet the sunrise at the city-gates, -

There where the meadows waken in its rays,
Golden with mist, and the great roads commence,
And backward, where the chimney-tops are dense,
Cathedral-arches glimmer through the haze.

White dunes that breaking show a strip of s...

When heavy on my tired mind
The world, and worldly things, do weigh,
And some sweet solace I would find,
Into the sky I love to stray,
And, all alone, to wander round
In lone seclusion from the ground.

Ah! Then what solitude is mine -
From grovelling mankind aloof!
Their road is but a thin-drawn line:
Their busy house a scarce-seen roof.
That little stain of red and brown
They boast about! - It is their town!

How small their petty quarrels seem!
Poor, crawling multitudes below;
Which, like the ants, in feverish stream
From place to place move to and fro!
Like ants they work: like ants they fight,
Assuming blindly they are right.

Soon their existence I forget,
In joy that on these flashing wings
I cleave the skies - O! let ...

Here, pent about by office walls
And barren eyes all day,
’Tis sweet to think of waterfalls
Two hundred miles away!

I would not ask you, friends, to brook
An old, old truth from me,
If I could shut a Poet’s book
Which haunts me like the Sea!

He saith to me, this Poet saith,
So many things of light,
That I have found a fourfold faith,
And gained a twofold sight.

He telleth me, this Poet tells,
How much of God is seen
Amongst the deep-mossed English dells,
And miles of gleaming green.

From many a black Gethsemane,
He leads my bleeding feet
To where I hear the Morning Sea
Round shining spaces beat!

To where I feel the wind, which brings
A sound of running creeks,
And blows those dark, unpleasant things,<...

They tell us that the Muse is soon to fly hence,
Leaving the bowers of song that once were dear,
Her robes bequeathing to her sister, Science,
The groves of Pindus for the axe to clear.

Optics will claim the wandering eye of fancy,
Physics will grasp imagination's wings,
Plain fact exorcise fiction's necromancy,
The workshop hammer where the minstrel sings,

No more with laugher at Thalia's frolics
Our eyes shall twinkle till the tears run down,
But in her place the lecturer on hydraulics
Spout forth his watery science to the town.

No more our foolish passions and affections
The tragic Muse with mimic grief shall try,
But, nobler far, a course of vivisections
Teach what it costs a tortured brute to die.

The unearthed monad, long in burie...

The saintly Youth has ceased to rule, discrowned
By unrelenting Death. O People keen
For change, to whom the new looks always green!
Rejoicing did they cast upon the ground
Their Gods of wood and stone; and, at the sound
Of counter-proclamation, now are seen,
(Proud triumph is it for a sullen Queen!)
Lifting them up, the worship to confound
Of the Most High. Again do they invoke
The Creature, to the Creature glory give;
Again with frankincense the altars smoke
Like those the Heathen served; and mass is sung;
And prayer, man's rational prerogative,
Runs through blind channels of an unknown tongue.

Methinks that I could trip o'er heaviest soil,
Light as a buoyant bark from wave to wave,
Were mine the trusty staff that Jewel gave
To youthful Hooker, in familiar style
The gift exalting, and with playful smile:
For thus equipped, and bearing on his head
The Donor's farewell blessing, can he dread
Tempest, or length of way, or weight of toil?
More sweet than odours caught by him who sails
Near spicy shores of Araby the blest,
A thousand times more exquisitely sweet,
The freight of holy feeling which we meet,
In thoughtful moments, wafted by the gales
From fields where good men walk, or bowers wherein they rest.

Think me not unkind and rude
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery
But 'tis figured in the flowers;
Was never secret history
But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.

Why sleeps the future, as a snake enrolled,
Coil within coil, at noon-tide? For the WORD
Yields, if with unpresumptuous faith explored,
Power at whose touch the sluggard shall unfold
His drowsy rings. Look forth! that Stream behold,
That stream upon whose bosom we have passed
Floating at ease while nations have effaced
Nations, and Death has gathered to his fold
Long lines of mighty Kings look forth, my Soul!
(Nor in this vision be thou slow to trust)
The living Waters, less and less by guilt
Stained and polluted, brighten as they roll,
Till they have reached the eternal City built
For the perfected Spirit of the just!

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.
II
What can I but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride?

And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
i(The Countess Cathleen) was t...

"And has the Sun his flaming chariot driven
Two hundred times around the ring of heaven,
Since Science first, with all her sacred train,
Beneath yon roof began her heavenly reign?
While thus I mused, methought, before mine eyes,
The Power of Education seemed to rise;
Not she whose rigid precepts trained the boy
Dead to the sense of every finer joy;
Nor that vile wretch who bade the tender age
Spurn Reason's law and humour Passion's rage;
But she who trains the generous British youth
In the bright paths of fair majestic Truth:
Emerging slow from Academus' grove
In heavenly majesty she seemed to move.
Stern was her forehead, but a smile serene
'Softened the terrors of her awful mien.'
Close at her side were all the powers, designed
To curb, exalt, reform th...

Where is the man who has been tried and found strong and sound?
Where is the friend of reason and of knowledge?
I see only sceptics and weaklings.
I see only prisoners in the durance of the senses,
And every fool and every spendthrift
Thinks himself as great a master as Aristotle.
Think'st thou that they have written poems?
Call'st thou that a Song?
I call it the cackling of ravens.
The zeal of the prophet must free poesy
From the embrace of wanton youths.
My song I have inscribed on the forehead of Time,
They know and hate it - for it is lofty.

Solomon Ben Judah Gabirol (Died Between 1070-80.)

At noon, upon the mountain's purple height,
Above the pine-woods and the clouds it shone
No larger than the small white dome of shell
Left by the fledgling wren when wings are born.
By night it joined the company of heaven,
And, with its constant light, became a star.
A needle-point of light, minute, remote,
It sent a subtler message through the abyss,
Held more significance for the seeing eye
Than all the darkness that would blot it out,
Yet could not dwarf it.
                        High in heaven it shone,
Alive with all the thoughts, and hopes, and dreams
Of man's adventurous mind.
                            Up there, I knew
The explorers of the sky, the pioneers
Of science, now made ready to attack
That darkness once again, and win new worlds.

I.

There is one road, one only, to the Light:
    A narrow way, but Freedom walks therein;
A straight, firm road through Chaos and old Night,
    And all these wandering Jack-o-Lents of Sin.

It is the road of Law, where Pilate stays
    To hear, at last, the answer to his cry;
And mighty sages, groping through their maze
    Of eager questions, hear a child reply.

Truth? What is Truth? Come, look upon my tables.
    Begin at your beginnings once again.
Twice one is two! Though all the rest be fables,
    Here's one poor glimpse of Truth to keep you sane.

For Truth, at first, is clean accord with fact,
Whether in line or thought, or word, or act.


II.

Then, by those first, those clean, precise, accords,

Great are the myths - I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve - I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors, and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower;
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail,
I weather it out with you, or sink with you.

Great is Youth - equally great is Old Age - great are the Day and Night;
Great is Wealth - great is Poverty - great is Expression - great is Silence.

Youth, large, lusty, loving - Youth, full of grace, force, fascination!
Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?

Day, full-blown and splendid - Day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter,
The Night ...