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| DAY-STARS! that ope your frownless eyes to twinkle | |
| From rainbow galaxies of earth’s creation, | |
| And dew-drops on her lonely altars sprinkle | |
| As a libation. | |
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| Ye matin worshippers! who bending lowly | 5 |
| Before the uprisen sun, God’s lidless eye, | |
| Throw from your chalices a sweet and holy | |
| Incense on high. | |
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| Ye bright mosaics! that with storied beauty | |
| The floor of Nature’s temple tessellate, | 10 |
| What numerous emblems of instructive duty | |
| Your forms create! | |
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| ’Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth | |
| And tolls its perfume on the passing air, | |
| Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth | 15 |
| A call to prayer. | |
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| Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column | |
| Attest the feebleness of mortal hand, | |
| But to that fane, most catholic and solemn, | |
| Which God hath planned; | 20 |
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| To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder, | |
| Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply; | |
| Its choir the wings and waves, its organ thunder, | |
| Its dome the sky. | |
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| There, as in solitude and shade I wander | 25 |
| Through the green aisles, or stretched upon the sod, | |
| Awed by the silence, reverently ponder | |
| The ways of God, | |
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| Your voiceless lips, O flowers! are living preachers, | |
| Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book, | 30 |
| Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers | |
| From loneliest nook. | |
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| Floral apostles! that in dewy splendor | |
| “Weep without woe, and blush without a crime,” | |
| O, may I deeply learn, and ne’er surrender | 35 |
| Your lore sublime! | |
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| “Thou wert not, Solomon, in all thy glory, | |
| Arrayed,” the lilies cry, “in robes like ours! | |
| How vain your grandeur! ah, how transitory | |
| Are human flowers!” | 40 |
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| In the sweet-scented pictures, heavenly artist, | |
| With which thou paintest Nature’s wide-spread hall, | |
| What a delightful lesson thou impartest | |
| Of love to all! | |
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| Not useless are ye, flowers! though made for pleasure; | 45 |
| Blooming o’er field and wave, by day and night, | |
| From every source your sanction bids me treasure | |
| Harmless delight. | |
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| Ephemeral sages! what instructors hoary | |
| For such a world of thought could furnish scope? | 50 |
| Each fading calyx a memento mori, | |
| Yet fount of hope. | |
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| Posthumous glories! angel-like collection! | |
| Upraised from seed or bulb interred in earth, | |
| Ye are to me a type of resurrection | 55 |
| And second birth. | |
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| Were I in churchless solitudes remaining, | |
| Far from all voice of teachers and divines, | |
| My soul would find, in flowers of God’s ordaining, | |
| Priests, sermons, shrines! | 60 |
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