THERE is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
under the deep, deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound; no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.
Thomas Hood (1799–1845).
SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW
THEY do but grope in learning's pedant round
Who on the phantasies of sense bestow
An idol substance, bidding us bow low
Before those shades of being which are found,
Stirring or still, on man's brief trial-ground;
As if such shapes and modes, which come and go,
Had aught of Truth or Life in their poor show,
To sway or judge, and skill to sain or wound.
Son of immortal seed, high-destined Man!
a creature, yet a cause:
Each mind is its own centre, and it draws
Home to itself, and moulds in its thought's span,
All outward things, the vassals of its will,
Aided by Heaven, by earth unthwarted still.
Cardinal Newman (1801-1890).
PLEASURES lie thickest where no pleasures seem,
There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground,
But holds some joy, of silence, or of sound;
Some sprite begotten of a summer dream.
The very meanest things are made supreme
With innate ecstasy. No grain of sand
But moves a bright and million peopled land,
And hath its Edens and its Eves, I deem.
For Love, though blind himself, a curious eye
Hath lent me, to behold the hearts of things,
And touched mine ear with power. Thus, far or nigh,
Minute or mighty, fixed, or free with wings,
Delight from many a nameless covert sly
Peeps sparkling, and in tones familiar sings.
Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804-1845).
As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
And leave his broken playthings'on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
Nor wholly reassured and comforted
By promises of others in their stead,
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wished to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).
THE holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows:
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on the stream,
These tender memories are;
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
OFT have I seen at some cathedral door
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves
Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
What exultations trampling on despair,
What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
This mediæval miracle of song!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
I ENTER, and I see thee in the gloom
Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine. The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
The congregation of the dead make room
For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine
The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
From the confessionals I hear arise
Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
And lamentations from the crypts below;
And then a voice celestial that begins
With the pathetic words, "Although your sins
As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
A WRETCHED THING IT WERE, TO HAVE
OUR HEART
A WRETCHED thing it were, to have our heart
Like a broad highway or a populous street,
Where every idle thought has leave to meet,
Pause, or pass on, as in an open mart;
Or like some road-side pool, which no nice art
Has guarded that the cattle may not beat
And foul it with a multitude of feet,
Till of the heavens it can give back no part.
But keep thou thine a holy solitude,
For He, who would walk there, would walk alone;
He who would drink there, must be first endued
With single right to call that stream his own;
Keep thou thine heart close-fastened, unrevealed,
A fenced garden and a fountain sealed.
Archbishop Trench (1807-1886).
TO LEAVE UNSEEN SO MANY A GLORIOUS
SIGHT
To leave unseen so many a glorious sight,
To leave so many lands unvisited,
To leave so many worthiest books unread,
Unrealized so many visions bright;
Oh! wretched yet inevitable spite
Of our brief span, that we must yield our breath,
And wrap us in the unfeeling coil of death,
So much remaining of unproved delight.
But hush, my soul, and vain regrets, be stilled;
Find rest in Him who is the complement
Of whatsoe'er transcends our mortal doom,
Of baffled hope and unfulfilled intent:
In the clear vision and aspect of whom
All longings and all hopes shall be fulfilled.
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