Three Sonnets of Worship

A WHISPER of the night, a murmur of the sea,
A glint of flame beyond the westward hills,
Wing on the sentient air, softly revealing Thee,
Whose ever moving inspiration fills
The spring with ecstasy, calls fluttering nestlings home
To hushed arcades of sanctuaried woods,
And quivers in the blue of heaven’s translucent dome,
In mystery of unending solitudes.

A wandering evening wind, a silence of the sky,
The flash of sunlit wings in joyous flight,
Woo our awakening hearts to Thee, and testify
Of worlds invisible and infinite.
Like freshening summer rain Thy benedictions fall
On thirsting lands from deep enfolding skies;
Thy revelation seeks by myriad ways to call
An answering vision to our veilèd eyes.

The city’s burning heart beats far outside
This dim cathedral, where the mystic air
Vibrates with voices of impassioned prayer,
From generations that have lived and died.
Calm saints, despairing sinners, here have cried
To Heaven for mercy ; myriad lives laid bare
Their secret places, yielding to Christ’s care
The burden, where his sacraments abide.
Soft from the jeweled windows falls the light,
Touching the incense-laden atmosphere
To glory, while a deep antiphony
Rolls from the organ to the arches’ height.
To soul and sense a Presence liveth here,
Instinct with power of immortality.

Winged with desire for worlds unknown, my soul
Absorbed itself beyond itself, and free,
Floating in pure white flame, I thought to see
The immaterial vision of life’s whole;
To find the sealed invisible unroll,
And grasp the flying form of Mystery.
But lo, near earth-born voices came to me.
Fraught with our common happiness and dole.
I felt a little child’s glad love of life ;
I wept with women in the house of death,
Worshiped with sinners at the Virgin’s shrine.
Within all joy, within all pangs of strife,
I touched the silent spirit’s quivering breath,
And in the human found the light divine.