| |
| FLOW on forever, in thy glorious robe | |
| Of terror and of beauty. Yea, flow on | |
| Unfathomed and resistless. God hath set | |
| His rainbow on thy forehead; and the cloud | |
| Mantled around thy feet. And he doth give | 5 |
| Thy voice of thunder power to speak of Him | |
| Eternally,—bidding the lip of man | |
| Keep silence,—and upon thy rocky altar pour | |
Incense of awe-struck praise.
Ah! who can dare | |
| To lift the insect-trump of earthly hope, | 10 |
| Or love, or sorrow, mid the peal sublime | |
| Of thy tremendous hymn? Even Ocean shrinks | |
| Back from thy brotherhood, and all his waves | |
| Retire abashed. For he doth sometimes seem | |
| To sleep like a spent laborer, and recall | 15 |
| His wearied billows from their vexing play, | |
| And lull them to a cradle calm; but thou, | |
| With everlasting, undecaying tide, | |
| Dost rest not, night or day. The morning stars, | |
| When first they sang o’er young creation’s birth, | 20 |
| Heard thy deep anthem; and those wrecking fires, | |
| That wait the archangel’s signal to dissolve | |
| This solid earth, shall find Jehovah’s name | |
| Graven, as with a thousand diamond spears, | |
On thine unending volume.
Every leaf, | 25 |
| That lifts itself within thy wide domain, | |
| Doth gather greenness from thy living spray, | |
| Yet tremble at the baptism. Lo!—yon birds | |
| Do boldly venture near, and bathe their wing | |
| Amid thy mist and foam. ’T is meet for them | 30 |
| To touch thy garment’s hem, and lightly stir | |
| The snowy leaflets of thy vapor-wreath, | |
| For they may sport unharmed amid the cloud, | |
| Or listen at the echoing gate of heaven, | |
| Without reproof. But as for us, it seems | 35 |
| Scarce lawful, with our broken tones, to speak | |
| Familiarly of thee. Methinks, to tint | |
| Thy glorious features with our pencil’s point, | |
| Or woo thee to the tablet of a song, | |
Were profanation.
Thou dost make the soul | 40 |
| A wondering witness of thy majesty, | |
| But as it presses with delirious joy | |
| To pierce thy vestibule, dost chain its step, | |
| And tame its rapture with the humbling view | |
| Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand | 45 |
| In the dread presence of the Invisible, | |
| As if to answer to its God through thee. | |
| |
