Classic Poem

No spirit brooded on the placid deep,
Like blind blue eyes awake, and yet asleep,
Like dead blue eyes that neither laugh nor weep
The ocean lay. The waves no blossom bore,
There flowered no foam upon the barren shore.

Then wondrously and strangely as a star
Out of a fire-mist grows,
I saw a billow blossoming afar
Into a rose —
Into the lily, and the rose of thee,
Thou fairy blossom of the flowerless sea.

O, as upon the sea I saw thee float,
Thro' the blue water gleamed thine arms and throat
Like water-lilies swaying in a mist
Of lapis lazuli and amethyst,
And thy face, sweetly blossoming above,
Lay like a rose upon the breast of Love.

Then found I all the meaning of the world,
I saw all nature like a bud unroll;
From the far nebula I saw unfurled
The beauty of thy body and thy soul,
And knew that God's importunate desire
For beauty had conceived the mist of fire,
And that a living heart of love must be
Within the heaving bosom of the sea.

His soul's divine beatitude
Lit up his eyes like altar fire,
Crowned with the laurel-leaves he stood,
And God's breath ran along his lyre.
So the strings rippled music-fain,
Like breezy ranks of golden grain.

He merely caught God's lyric wind
In a strange web of waiting strings,
And we the deaf, and we the blind,
Heard the soft sound of many wings,
And saw the light of heaven gleam
On the horizon of a dream.

He merely waited, pure and pale,
Kneeling alone on Calvary sod,
And humbly held the Holy Grail
To catch the heart-blood of his God —
The blood of love that trickles yet,
Tho' men deny and men forget.

Thus merely did he sing and do
So little, yet perchance so much;
He held his hands to catch the dew,
He made a harp for God to touch,
And kept his soul so pure and fair,
We found God's face reflected there.