The Spirit Of Poetry

All things are Hers. Concealed or manifest,

    Found or unfound, Her Spirit lives in each—

Dumb till the Master-Soul its secret guessed

                And gave its silence speech.

All things are Hers. She is the Crystal Queen

    Of all men’s vision, and the moving breath

Which through the greyness of the sordid scene

                Gloweth and quickeneth.

She is the flower-maid of the dreaming noon,

    The goddess of the temple of the night;

Where the berg-turrets gleam beneath the moon

                She builds Her throne of white.

She knows the Battle-Hymn of mighty wars

    When wind and ocean thunder on the strand.

She knows the song the lonely river-bars

                Sing to the listening land.

Armoured and helmeted and spurred for fight

    She fires men’s hearts to right the bitter wrong;

Yet sits She weaving of a summer night

                Flowers of a bridal song.

She gives the temper that has made men great

    And fashioned heroes out of common clay,

And welded firm into a mighty State

                The tribes of yesterday.

Youth’s radiant vision, and the dreamy dawn

    Of the soft lovelight in a maiden’s eyes,

And holiest joys of motherhood, are drawn

                By Her from Paradise.

She knows the Wheel-Song of the Stars that run

    Their glittering courses through the blue abyss.

Ere the round earth fell flaming from the sun

                Her spirit was, and is.

She is the Phoeix, ever making true

    The dim tradition of the misty morn.

The crucible of science gives anew

                Her fairy form re-born.

All things are Hers—but not with equal word

    Dowers She the pilgrims of the sacred shrine.

Only the Great Interpreters have heard

                Her melodies divine.

All things are Hers, and so to Her I bring

    Songs of the dreams that haunt me on my way—

I who scarce hear the rustle of Her wing

                Borne on the wind away!