Page:Hymns of the Marshes.djvu/35

 As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air,

Pray me a myriad prayer.

My gossip, the owl,—is it thou

That out of the leaves of the low-hanging bough,

As I pass to the beach, art stirred?

Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird?

Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea,

Old chemist, rapt in alchemy,

Distilling silence,—lo,

That which our father-age had died to know—

The menstruum that dissolves all matter—thou

Hast found it; for this silence, filling now

The globèd clarity of receiving space,

This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, disgrace,

Death, love, sin, sanity,

Must in yon silence' clear solution lie.

Too clear! That crystal nothing who'll peruse?