ONCE more the soft, terraqueous chaunt I hear
In choral, and the nuptial planet-dance
I mark. With puissant sceptre o'er each sphere,
Life thrones in music and in wonder's trance.
Hail! vessels solar and terrestrial, hail!
Whose prows shall cross the dim, celestial bars
With helm sidereal and cloudy sail,
Bannered with youth and lanterned with the stars.
What fates for ballast? by what voices grim
And laughters urged, your astral course I mark,--
Warped to what ports remote your hulks shall swim
Or anchor silent in what stagnant dark?
Mine arms have raised you from the cosmic deep;
Now Fire hath sprent his jewelled drops and sown
Marvellous seeds whence beauty's plants shall creep
Season to season weaving, zone to zone.
Now sacerdotal Love shall shape and dye
His forms within the house of joy and tears,
And Birth shall bless and Death shall sanctify
Earth's passion and her pageant through the years.
Down the everlasting, unchangeable cope the hymnal of Life is
reft away.
But its music is showered over Earth.
It is prisoned in the sea-shells; the flowers garner it in
their chalices.
It stirs in the heart of Man.