| |
| SWEET voices! seldom mortal ear | |
| Strains of such potency might hear; | |
| My soul that listened seemed quite gone, | |
| Dissolved in sweetness, and anon | |
| I was borne upward, till I trod | 5 |
| Among the hierarchy of God. | |
| And when they ceased, as time must bring | |
| An end to every sweetest thing, | |
| With what reluctancy came back | |
| My spirits to their wonted track, | 10 |
| And how I loathed the common life, | |
| The daily and recurring strife | |
| With petty sins, the lowly road, | |
| And being’s ordinary load. | |
| —Why, after such a solemn mood, | 15 |
| Should any meaner thought intrude? | |
| Why will not heaven hereafter give, | |
| That we for evermore may live | |
| Thus at our spirit’s topmost bent? | |
| So asked I in my discontent. | 20 |
| |
| But give me, Lord, a wiser heart; | |
| These seasons come, and they depart, | |
| These seasons, and those higher still, | |
| When we are given to have our fill | |
| Of strength and life and joy with Thee, | 25 |
| And brightness of Thy face to see. | |
| They come, or we could never guess | |
| Of heaven’s sublimer blessedness; | |
| They come, to be our strength and cheer | |
| In other times, in doubt or fear, | 30 |
| Or should our solitary way | |
| Lie through the desert many a day. | |
| They go, they leave us blank and dead, | |
| That we may learn, when they are fled, | |
| We are but vapours which have won | 35 |
| A moment’s brightness from the sun, | |
| And which it may at pleasure fill | |
| With splendour, or unclothe at will. | |
| Well for us they do not abide, | |
| Or we should lose ourselves in pride, | 40 |
| And be as angels—but as they | |
| Who on the battlements of day | |
| Walked, gazing on their power and might, | |
| Till they grew giddy in their height. | |
| |
| Then welcome every nobler time, | 45 |
| When out of reach of earth’s dull chime | |
| ’Tis ours to drink with purgèd ears | |
| The music of the solemn spheres, | |
| Or in the desert to have sight | |
| Of those enchanted cities bright, | 50 |
| Which sensual eye can never see: | |
| Thrice welcome may such seasons be: | |
| But welcome too the common way, | |
| The lowly duties of the day, | |
| And all which makes and keeps us low, | 55 |
| Which teaches us ourselves to know, | |
| That we who do our lineage high | |
| Draw from beyond the starry sky, | |
| Are yet upon the other side | |
| To earth and to its dust allied. | 60 |
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