About the ancient mountain-walls Niched in the mighty minster, we, And worship breathing through! There came wild music on the winds As over a chorded lyre. Then pauses as for quiet prayer ; Of Strength Eternal, by whose will In grand old Bible verse we spoke : "IN THE HEART OF THINGS." The Silence, awful living Word, To us it spake within the soul, Through sense all strangely blent with sense; The vision took majestic rhythm We heard the firmaments! And listened, time and space forgot, And all the heaven seemed bending down Then, in its peace, we wandered down We met the climbing Night. W. C. Gannett. "IN THE HEART OF THINGS." A TURN, and we stand in the heart of things; The woods are round us, heaped and dim; From slab to slab how it slips and springs,— Through the ravage some torrent brings! Does it feed the little lake below? That speck of white just on its marge Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow How sharp the silver spear-heads charge When Alp meets Heaven in snow. On our other side is the straight-up rock; The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge Poor little place, where its one priest comes To the dozen folk from their scattered homes, By the dozen ways one roams. And all day long a bird sings there, And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times; The place is silent and aware; It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes, But that is its own affair. "IN THE HEART OF THINGS." Silent the crumbling bridge we cross, And pity and praise the chapel sweet, And care about the fresco's loss, And wish for our souls a like retreat, And wonder at the moss. We stoop and look in through the grate, Then cross the bridge we crossed before, Oh moment, one and infinite! The water slips o'er stock and stone; The west is tender, hardly bright: How gray at once is the evening grown One star, the chrysolite ! We two stood there with never a third, Oh, the little more, and how much it is! 57 A moment after, and hands unseen Were hanging the night around us fast ; The forests had done it; there they stood— I am named and known by that hour's feat, Robert Browning. TH THE MOUNTAIN WIND. HE mountain-wind !-most spiritual thing of all time He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall, IV. C. Bryant. |