Worship

Beautiful ever is a holy Thought.
   Though in the soul polluted and unchaste.
   Like a white lily blooming o'er the waste 
Of dank decay. It springeth forth untaught. 
A pure spontaneous sense of Worship, wrought
   By God's own Spirit, on the uneffaced
   Divinity of Soul; a sweet foretaste 
Of life's deep fullness, by all prophets sought. 
It lives, a joy amid a world of wo. —
   A beam of sunlight on a stormy sky,—
A seraph gliding amid fiends below,
   That quail and cower beneath her loveful eye 
Like a child-seer it doth serenely go,
   With prideless port of simple majesty.

When in our spirit springs new reverence 
   Of divine Beauty, shaming all the great,
   And good, and holy, of our first estate.
Clad in meet symbols to the outward sense 
It goeth forth, in the omnipotence
   Of artless Truth, new Beauty to create ;
   Hence boweth Prayer, knee -bent beneath the weight 
Of its most earnest aspirations,— hence
   The Hermon-dew of Baptism, showering soft
   As divine Mercy on the sin-parched heart,— 
Thus bread, and the vine's fruitage bring their oft
   Memorial of His Life, henceforth a part 
Of our life's daily bread, that draws forever
   Our infinite hunger, to the Infinite Giver

Holiest of Symbols stands the awful Cross;
   Type of the hero-spirit's martyr-deeds,
   When with the sweat of agony it bleeds 
Over slain Hopes, and Pleasure's utmost loss, 
And pure Love's boon flung back with scornful toss.—
   Yet never shrinking from the cause it pleads.
   Even when the wrung, forsaken spirit feeds 
On disappointments keener than remorse. 
Whatever kind heart, sick at human wrongs,
   Casts all its treasure, claiming no exemption,
   Into the great price of the world's redemption. 
To it, to such, that hallowed Sign belongs ]
   Though oft profaned, it fronts contending vans, 
Where creed on creed pours down its warring parti sans.

Even as the viewless Soul of Beauty decks 
   Itself in flowers, with each returning spring 
   Our holy Thought puts on its blossoming

Of visible forms, made richer by the wrecks
Of all the past, as the old greenness makes 
   The new more verdant. An eternal thing, 
   It lives unaltered through the perishing
Of leaf-like symbols, and forever takes
A lovelier vesture at the sweet upgrowth 
   Of its spring newness, more and more divine,
Pure and ethereal, as its own life doth
   In Heaven's sunlight grow more crystalline :
And never lives a kingly Soul but loathes 
   To cloak his breathing Thought in his dead father's clothes.

Shall the new corn put on the old ear's husk ? 
   The withered foliage clothe the budding spring?
   The healed cripple to his crutches cling?
Or day forever wear its morning dusk?
Eternal Life still works eternal change: 
   If thou wouldst nourish an abiding thing, 
   Make the Great Past thy servant, not thy king,
And be thy field the Present's boundless range:
God is not perished, that we need look back 
   To his dim steps on Being's wave-worn shore,
Nor walk our spirits with so huge a lack.
   That we must beg what eldest Ages wore, 
And load our young Thought with the iron shirt 
By bigots raked from some Judean grave-yard's dirt!

Let every spirit bend before the shrine 
Of its own God,—seen in the wonder-zone 
   Of its miraculous life, that keeps alone
The sure God-records, written line by line
In its expanding being: it is thine
   To scatter Wisdom, not Belief; to give
   Bread, not Digestion, that thy kind may live,—
Even the “True Bread" of a Life Divine.
Free as ascending mists, that on the air
   Fashion all beautiful shapes, from spirit-deeps
Goes up spontaneously the soul of Prayer, 
   As, blazing sun-like, Trust immortal keeps
Its high path o'er the world of thought and sense.
Light of our souls, and life of all our Reverence.

All things grow holy to the holy soul,
   Time and the place wherein its blessed deeds 
   Are borne, and love-sown thoughts spring up, the seeds
Of after blessings. From the utmost pole
To its far fellow, arches o'er the whole
   One temple-dome of Love; wherein she leads
   Perpetual Worship, though no victim bleeds 
And burns for Superstition's hungry ghoule. 
Day after day, hallowed by generous toil,
   Leads in perpetual dance its Sabbath hours; 
Bowed o'er the bench, or kneeling on the soil,
   He worships best who best bestows his powers; 
And never yet a deed was done for love 
Of God or man, but 't rose a holy thing above.