| Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Poems.
III. Sense, Faith, and Glory | | By Aubrey de Vere (1814–1902) |
| | | THREE worlds there are:—the first of Sense— | |
| That sensuous earth which round us lies; | |
| The next of Faith’s Intelligence: | |
| The third of Glory in the skies. | |
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| The first is palpable, but base: | 5 |
| The second heavenly, but obscure; | |
| The third is star-like in the face— | |
| But ah! remote that world as pure! | |
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| Yet, glancing through our misty clime, | |
| Some sparkles from that loftier sphere | 10 |
| Make way to earth; then most what time | |
| The annual spring flowers appear. | |
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| Amid the coarser needs of earth | |
| All shapes of brightness, what are they | |
| But wanderers, exiled from their birth, | 15 |
| Or pledges of a happier day? | |
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| Yea, what is Beauty, judged aright, | |
| But some surpassing, transient gleam; | |
| Some smile from heaven, in waves of light, | |
| Rippling o’er life’s distempered dream? | 20 |
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| Or broken memories of that bliss | |
| Which rushed through first-born Nature’s blood | |
| When He who ever was, and is, | |
| Looked down, and saw that all was good? | | | | |
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