I

I worship Him from whom life grew;
Who wrought from earth, and air, and flame,
One type, disjointing to renew
Through endless genesis the same;
Through wrecks of elemental strife,
Through changing phases still began,
Till crowned the mighty loom of life
The god-like microcosm, Man.

II

I worship Him destroying works
While recreating; blending death
With life that in its bosom lurks;
Infusing feral forms with breath
Akin to man, to tame his pride;
The widening thought and process given
Of living memory, that allied
The anatomy of dust with heaven!

III

I worship Him who raised the brute
With his flint-axe from human prey,
To hear how Nature spake though mute;
To feel the entering thought, and ray
Of mind enlarging; till he weighed
The stars, and chained the lightning's flame,
To prove, though time and life unmade,
The eternal source from whence he came; —

IV

To search for marvels unrevealed,
The knot unbound, the veils unraised;
The book of mystery unsealed,
But closed from eyes too near that gazed;
The trembling hope and faith that strove
With doubt and fear, till life was o'er; —
The soul, that in its visions wove
The dreams of an immortal shore.

V

I worship Life itself, the form
That slept within the shade of death,
Until the Statue's self was warm,
And lived beneath the Maker's breath;
Material mould, that heaved around
The central Sun through endless space,
And stony animation found
While gazing on the Gorgon's face.

VI

I worship life, the growth of love,
Beneath its veil protecting cast;
The rainbow glassing from above,
The type of strife and tempest passed;
That still its flowery chaplet flings
On glooms where cypress shadows wave;
That, child-like, round destruction clings,
And makes a cradle of the grave.