VII.

Innumerable as the ocean sands

The angel concourse in due order stood,

In meek anticipation waiting for

The new-created orbs,

Still hidden in the deep

And unseen laboratory, where

Not even angel eyes could penetrate:

A star for each of that angelic host,

Memorials of their faithfulness and love.

The Evening Star, God's bright eternal gift

To the pure Seraph with the brow of light,

And named for her, mild Hesperus,

Came twinkling down the unencumbered blue,

On viewless wings of sweet melodious sound,

Beauty and grace presiding at its birth.

Celestial plaudits sweeping through the skies

Waked resonant paeans, till the concave thrilled

Through its illimitable bounds.

With a sudden burst

Of light, that lit the universal space

As with a flame of crystal,

Rousing the Soul of Joy

That slumbered in the patient sea,

From every point of heaven the hurrying cars

Conveyed the constellations to their thrones —

The throbbing planets, and the burning suns,

Erratic comets, and the various grades

And magnitudes of palpitating stars.

From the far arctic and antarctic zones,

Through all the vast, surrounding infinite,

A wilderness of intermingling orbs,

The gleaming wonders, pulsing earthward, came;

Each to its destined place,

Each in itself a world,

With all its coining myriad life,

Drawing us nearer the Omnipotent,

With hearts of wonder, and with souls of praise:

Astrea, Pallas, strange Aldebaran,

The Pleiads, Arcturus, the ruddy Mars,

Pale Saturn, Ceres and Orion —

All as they circle still

Through the enraptured void.

For each young angel born to us from earth,

A new-made star is launched among its peers.

Dreamer in the realms aërial,

Searcher for the true and good,

Hoper for the high, ethereal

Limit of Beatitude,

Lift thy heart to heaven, for there

Is embalmed thy spirit prayer:

Not in words is shrined thy prayer,

But thy Thought awaits thee there.

God loves the silent worshipper.

The grandest hymn

That nature chants — the litany

Of the rejoicing stars — is silent praise.

Their nightly anthems stir

The souls of lofty seraphim

In the remotest heaven. The melody

Descends in throbbings of celestial light

Into the heart of man, whose upward gaze,

And meditative aspect, tell

Of the heart's incense passing up the night.

Above the crystalline height

The theme of thoughtful praise ascends.

Not from the wildest swell

Of the vexed ocean soars the fullest psalm;

But in the evening calm,

And in the solemn midnight, silence blends

With silence, and to the ear

Attuned to harmony divine

Begets a strain

Whose trance-like stillness wakes delicious pain.

The silent tear

Holds keener anguish in its orb of brine,

Deeper and truer grief

Than the loud wail that brings relief,

As thunder clears the atmosphere.

But the deep, tearless Sorrow,— how profound!

Unspoken to the ear

Of sense,‘ tis yet as eloquent a sound

As that which wakes the lyre

Of the rejoicing Day, when

Morn on the mountains lights his urn of fire.

The flowers of the glen

Rejoice in silence; huge pines stand apart

Upon the lofty hills, and sigh

Their woes to every breeze that passeth by;

The willow tells its mournful tale

So tenderly, that e'en the passing gale

Bears not a murmur on its wings

Of what the spirit sings

That breathes its trembling thoughts through all the drooping strings.

He loves God most who worships most

In the obedient heart.

The thunder's noisome boast,

What is it to the violet lightning thought?

So with the burning passion of the stars —

Creation's diamond sands,

Strewn along the pearly strands,

And far-extending corridors

Of heaven's blooming shores;

No scintil of their jewelled flame

But wafts the exquisite essence

Of prayer to the Eternal Presence,

Of praise to the Eternal Name.

The silent prayer unbars

The gates of Paradise, while the too-intimate,

Self-righteous’ boast, strikes rudely at the gate

Of heaven, unknowing why it does not open to

Their summons, as they see pale Silence passing through.