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Read Ebook: Song-waves by Rand Theodore H Theodore Harding
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Ebook has 339 lines and 16152 words, and 7 pages
Rapture of seraphs bright thou art, Yet kindlest in the human heart The fluid soul's upbreathed emotion, Whose light shines clear as a star apart,--
A fairer light of sweeter fame Than science knows to praise or blame, Wherein the soul has open vision, And feels the glow of His holy flame.
Impressions vast and vague flow in From Somewhat that to me is kin. Shall I assemble them all careless In the mind's garret or waste dust-bin?
Nay. In solution in the soul's Own hot equators, frosty poles, I'll more and more their import cherish, Their deeps on deeps to my shelving shoals.
O heart, with tentacles in sea, Like oral-disked anemone, Taste thou the wine of shoreless oceans, And feed on food that was meant for thee!
'Tis fit the bloodroot in white hood Should brave the parting winter's mood,-- Come, thou, pale violet, streaked, sweet-scented, Beside the runs of this tempered wood.
I hunger for thy gentle face, Sweetest of all the wildwood race! O flower, at once ideal and essence, Why stayest thou from thy wonted place?
Thou art not dead? Nay, when death crept Upon thy form, thy full life leapt Defiance at the harsh destroyer, And slept as seed! Thou hast overslept.
The sweep, O heart, of Love's account! Hearken: "I am of life the Fount; All are within My deeps of Being, The toiling city, the sea, the mount.
"Yea, when thou cleav'st the pillared tree, Raisest the stone, I am with thee; Darkness and light, flux and becoming, Signal My presence, and ceaselessly.
"Regard Me not as though afar; Ope thine heart's eyes, and, lo, My Star Burns 'neath Time's vesture, true Shekinah, Centre and Soul of the things that are."
Superbest power with sweetness wed The inner eye doth overspread, And vasts of nature blend as beauty Suffused with awe at the Fountain Head.
The stream of power that floweth here I see in pageant of the year, Aye shimmering as light and shadow-- A wonderment on the verge of fear!
The world's not dead but animate, And gives as free to mean as great; Wealth of true power is not a kingdom Of time and place, but the soul's estate.
Above the scarred cliff's iron brow There speeds the fruitful crooked plow; While on the soft west wind come odors Of plumy pine and of balsam bough.
Here at the base another sight-- It ceaseth not by day nor night-- Ormudz and Ahriman contending, Destroyer dark and White Soul of light!
Bared by life's ever beating brine, The rocky bases that define Of good and ill the place of meeting, Be bugle-call to this heart of mine!
After the winds there is surcease; Take courage, heart, and be at peace; The printless beach, all combed and shining, In beauty lies with its windrow fleece.
Impetuous as a torrent's speed White horses raced this watery mead, With manes of chrysoprase aflowing, Each neighing loud to its neighbour steed.
The wastes that finger pebbly shores, Unplowed by ship nor cut by oars, His music wake as sweet as attar, And flash in light as the heavenly floors.
Filled oft with portents, oft withdrawn, My inward skies, from earliest dawn To this full hour, have borne their witness Of one who out of the darkness shone.
The soul is dowered with awful things, Mystic as sound of unseen wings,-- The sense of God, of Law, of Duty, Of Life, and Destiny. Signet rings
Flash on these fingers of one hand-- The Hand of God! The mean, the grand, Tremble beneath the fearsome covert Till lurid sky with the Rainbow's spanned.
Who loveth not the elm tree fair, A fountain green in summer air, Whose tremulous spray cools the faint meadow, And croons to all of a careless care?
It shades the city's paven way, Where redbreast knows the white moon's ray; It sentinels the moss-grown homestead, And waits the men of a coming day.
Its curving lines that fill the sight, Like mellow meteor's path of light, Or orb?d spring of walls of azure, My spirit greet from the infinite.
Men plow and sow while moves the sun Away, away from work begun; Ofttimes they've heard "Seedtime and harvest Are sure"--the word of the Sovereign One.
We link our deeds with law supreme, In field and flood, in wood and stream; We test Omnipotence by labor, And reap rewards of no idle dream.
Obedience is the astringent wine That's quaffed by strenuous souls and fine, Of cloudy doubt the heavenly solvent, The Christ's elixir of life divine.
Doubt flies before the truth that's quired When earth in living green 's attired, As ghosts before the daystar's rising,-- The grass is ever God finger-spired.
When life is low my awe-stirred soul No vision has of nature's whole; It would unsheathe a weapon naked And cut the bands of divine control.
The Nazarene knows no decrease,-- He shed His beams on Rome and Greece! O radiant is His word: Consider The springing grass, and have rest and peace!
The bird of needle beak, and breast Of orange flame, doth weave its nest At tip of branch, a cradle swinging To all the airs of the south and west.
Who schooled thy needle to begin Its forth and back and out and in, Till plaited cot, a gourd-like pendant, Shall temper winds to thy first of kin?
Thy sun-bright mate, his joy to prove, Flutes sweet his ardors from above. O golden robin, skyey-nested, Thou rockest safe in the arms of Love.
Pure lily, open on the breast Of toiling waters' much unrest, Thy simple soul mounts up in worship Like ecstasy of a spirit blest!
Thy wealth of ivory and gold, All that thou hast, thou dost unfold! Fixed in the unseen thy life breathes upward A heavenly essence from out earth's mould.
Now comes the chill and dusk of night,-- Folds up thy precious gold and white! Thy casket sinks within veiled bosom, To ope the richer in morrow's light.
Revolving without rest and goal The way of life of budding soul, From seed to leaf and stalk, I see it, From leaf to bloom and from bloom to whole.
About the Daystar, God-indwelt, It turneth to His influence felt, Till, dusk beam-smitten into daylight, It in the palpitant heavens doth melt.
Lift, lift, ye gates of endless noons, That entrance yield on God's own boons Of liberty as law in fruitage, And timeless months of transcendent Junes!
O June has lit her splendid lamp In the broad meadow lush and damp, Where loves the brook in loops to loiter, And tufted vernal to pitch its camp!
Last night she veiled the starlit sky, And walked beside the brook so shy; She took from out her beating bosom A lighted orchis--and passed on high.
At dawn July came o'er the hills-- O light of eye and deep heart-thrills, As she beheld the glowing orchis Whose splendor now all the meadow fills!
A quiet breath distils in calm, And fills the fields with honeyed balm; It cools the rose's cheek, and rolleth In drops of dew on the poppy's palm--
Each crystal globe filled full of fire, And flashing like a color pyre, All heavened beneath the eye of morning, To sate the hunger of day's desire.
O Breath divine, that form and hue, And ecstasy of light and blue, Gave to Orion and the Pleiads, Thou hast begotten the orbs of dew.
Far-off and veiled it seems to me, The face of yester dreamy sea, That breathed so soft its shining waters Pungent with odors of rosemary.
No sculptured arabesque to-day, But unhewn strength in mighty play, That heaves the ship on bursting billow And smites the cliff in its ancient way!
Beneath its silken vestments beat A lion heart of jungle heat; Its couchant soul delights in battle To fell the rock and to whelm the fleet.
Vast promise is the sea, and vast Its pain. Its secret is held fast,-- Now hope's wide open eye and sunny, And now a weeping and wailing past.
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