| |
| MY genial spirits fail; | |
| And what can these avail | |
| To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? | |
| It were a vain endeavour, | |
| Though I should gaze for ever | 5 |
| On that green light that lingers in the west: | |
| I may not hope from outward forms to win | |
| The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. | |
| |
| O Lady! we receive but what we give, | |
| And in our life alone does Nature live: | 10 |
| Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud! | |
| And would we ought behold, of higher worth, | |
| Than that inanimate cold world allowed | |
| To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, | |
| Ah, from the soul itself must issue forth | 15 |
| A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud | |
| Enveloping the earth— | |
| And from the soul itself must there be sent | |
| A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, | |
| Of all sweet sounds the life and element! | 20 |
| |
| O pure of heart! thou need’st not ask of me | |
| What this strong music in the soul may be! | |
| What, and wherein it doth exist | |
| This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, | |
| This beautiful and beauty-making power. | 25 |
| Joy, virtuous Lady! joy that ne’er was given | |
| Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, | |
| Life, and life’s effluence, cloud at once and shower; | |
| Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power, | |
| Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower, | 30 |
| A new Earth and new Heaven, | |
| Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud— | |
| Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud— | |
| We in ourselves rejoice! | |
| And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, | 35 |
| All melodies the echoes of that voice, | |
| All colours a suffusion from that light. | |
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