Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/214

186 Swelling and pulsing like deep music heard

On sacred summer eves

When the loud organ grieves

And thrills with lyric life the incensed air,

While 'mid the pillared gloom the people bow in prayer.

III

Now is it some huge bird with monstrous vans

That through the sunset plies its shadowy way,

Catching on outstretched pinions the last play

Of failing tint celestial! See! it spans

Darkly the fading west,

And now its beamy crest

Follows from sight the glittering, golden sun;

And now one mighty wing-beat more, and all is done.

IV

But in those skyey spaces what dread change!

Thus have we seen the mortal turn immortal;

So doth the day's soul die, as through death's portal

The soul of man takes up its heavenward range.

A million orbs endue

The unfathomable blue—

Till, the long miracle of night withdrawn,

The world beholds once more the miracle of dawn.

V

Dawn, eve, and night, the iridescent seas,

Bright moon, enlightening sun, and quivering stars,

The midnight rose whose petals are the bars

Of Boreal lights, the pomp of autumn trees,

The pearl of curvèd shells,

The prismy bow that swells

'Gainst stormy skies—these witness, these are sign

Of thee, O spirit of Beauty, eternal and divine!