Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/371

Rh The Problem.

a church; I like a cowl;

I love a prophet of the soul;

And on my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles:

Yet not for all his faith can see

Would I that cowlèd churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure,

Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought

His awful Jove young Phidias brought;

Never from lips of cunning fell

The thrilling Delphic oracle;

Out from the heart of nature rolled

The burdens of the Bible old;

The litanies of nations came,

Like the volcano's tongue of flame,

Up from the burning core below,—

The canticles of love and woe:

The hand that rounded Peter's dome

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome

Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew;

The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Knowst thou what wove yon woodbird's nest

Of leaves and feathers from her breast?