Classic Poem

AW EDDING O DE

The mountain-air has grown so still,
The silence maketh audible
Your very hearts; and strange and new
Your lonely voices seem to you;
While to your eyes,
By Love made wise,
The earth, the skies,
The stars, the dew,
Seem merely symbols of the True.
Nay, all the outer world, I wis,
Is as an empty chrysalis,
Wherein ye dwelt ere Love ye knew,
The Love who with a summer kiss
Made your wings burn and blossom through
The hatching-place
Of Time and Space,
The hollow husk of green and blue.
And how then dare
My song invade
The sanctuary Love has made?
How dare my trembling lyre intrude
With praise or prayer
Upon so fair
A solitude?
How dare I singing, singing come,
When voices of the world are dumb?

O Friends, my song is as a bird
Hovering o'er your mountain height,
Soaring above
Your Peak of Love,
Warbling and singing out of sight.
Listen, its notes are hardly heard,
Nor is your holy silence stirred
By the far voice of its delight.

And lo! when Love shall lead you back,
By some green gradual mountain track,
To the old world and olden ways;
When from the Peak,
You come to seek,
The common task of common days,
To you the common tasks will seem
Common no more,
But hallowed by the mystic light,
That on the lofty mountain height,
Your passion wore.

And though your deeper insight deem
The outer shapes of earth and sky
Merely a fiction of the eye;
Yet will ye be content a while
With human lips to speak and smile:
Nor will ye less a man esteem,
Knowing his outer shape a dream;
Knowing besides
His body hides
A soul as swift, and strong, and true,
As in your own warm flesh abides,
And on the mountain quickened you.

O Friends, as winds that sing around
A sacred shrine,
So will you hear the distant sound
Of these poor words of mine.
My scrannel speech
Will hardly reach
Your passion-peak divine.

Lo, strand by strand, and mesh by mesh,
Strong Love has burst the bonds of flesh
That held your spirits body-bound.
No law of sense controls
Your disembodied souls,
Upon the Peak of Passion you have found,
Beyond our valley-ground
Of sight and sound;
And, in the holy atmosphere,
Wonder has kissed and conquered Fear.
Though Love have come so near,
His eyes your eyes are meeting,
And you can almost feel, and hear,
Beside your hearts his great heart beating.

Have you beheld one deep heart through,
In all its aisles and caverns have you trod?
Then all hearts blossom in your view,
The hearts of men, the Heart of God.
O, Love by smile and Love by kiss
Will verily have taught you this —
That every flower upon your path
A spiritual meaning hath,
That men hath living souls within,
And are your kin.
Every mother breathes a prayer,
Every father takes your hand,
All the children fresh and fair
See your eyes and understand;
Mother Mary draweth nigh
With the Babe upon her breast,
And on Earth and in the sky
Is the Father manifest.

Love is no Hermit in a hut,
No Monarch throned upon a hill,
His loving heart is never shut,
His loving voice is never still.
He will be with you in the street
As in the lonely Halls of Space,
In every country you will meet
His shining face.

O Friends, as winds that sing around
A sacred shrine,
So will you hear the distant sound
Of these poor words of mine.
My paltry speech
Will hardly reach
Your Passion-Peak divine.