GO up and watch the new-born rill | |
| Just trickling from its mossy bed, | |
| Streaking the heath-clad hill | |
| With a bright emerald thread. | |
| |
| Canst thou her bold career foretell, | 5 |
| What rocks she shall o’erleap or rend, | |
| How far in ocean’s swell | |
| Her freshening billows send? | |
| |
| Perchance that little brook shall flow | |
| The bulwark of some mighty realm, | 10 |
| Bear navies to and fro | |
| With monarchs at their helm. | |
| |
| Or canst thou guess how far away | |
| Some sister nymph, beside her urn | |
| Reclining night and day, | 15 |
| Mid reeds and mountain fern, | |
| |
| Nurses her store, with thine to blend, | |
| When many a moor and glen are past, | |
| Then in the wide sea end | |
| Their spotless lives at last? | 20 |
| |
| Even so, the course of prayer who knows? | |
| It springs in silence where it will, | |
| Springs out of sight, and flows | |
| At first a lonely rill: | |
| |
| But streams shall meet it by-and-by | 25 |
| From thousand sympathetic hearts, | |
| Together swelling high | |
| Their chant of many parts. | |
| |
| Unheard by all but Angel ears | |
| The good Cornelius knelt alone, | 30 |
| Nor dream’d his prayers and tears | |
| Would help a world undone. | |
| |
| The while upon his terrac’d roof | |
| The lov’d Apostle to his Lord | |
| In silent thought aloof | 35 |
| For heavenly vision soar’d. | |
| |
| Far o’er the glowing western main | |
| His wistful brow was upward raised, | |
| Where, like an Angel’s train, | |
| The burnish’d water blaz’d. | 40 |
| |
| The saint beside the ocean pray’d, | |
| The soldier in his chosen bower, | |
| Where all his eye survey’d | |
| Seem’d sacred in that hour. | |
| |
| To each unknown his brother’s prayer, | 45 |
| Yet brethren true in dearest love | |
| Were they—and now they share | |
| Fraternal joys above. | |
| |
| There daily through Christ’s open gate | |
| They see the Gentile spirits press, | 50 |
| Brightening their high estate | |
| With dearer happiness. | |
| |
| What civic wreath for comrades sav’d | |
| Shone ever with such deathless gleam, | |
| Or when did perils brav’d | 55 |
| So sweet to veterans seem? | |
| |
