Ere her limbs, frigidly, Decently, kindly, Smooth and compose them; Through muddy impurity, Perishing gloomily, Into her rest! Cross her hands humbly, Owning her weakness, And leaving, with meekness, Her sins to her Saviour! THE PROBLEM. BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON. I LIKE a church; I like a cowl, - Not from a vain or shallow thought The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The litanies of nations came, The hand that rounded Peter's dome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew, The conscious stone to beauty grew. Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest Of leaves, and feathers from her breast? O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, Ever the fiery Pentecost Girds with one flame the countless host, Trances the heart through chanting choirs, And through the priest the mind inspires. The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost. I know what say the fathers wise, The book itself before me lies, Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, And he who blent both in his line, The younger golden lips or mines,Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines; His words are music in my ear, I see his cowléd portrait dear; And yet, for all his faith could see, I would not the good bishop be. |