Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,
And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
And strangers to the plant and to the mine.
The injured elements say, "Not in us;"
And night and day, ocean and continent,
Fire, plant, and mineral say, "Not in us,"
And haughtily return us stare for stare.
For we invade them impiously for gain;
We devastate them unreligiously,
And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.
Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
Only what to our griping toil is due;
But the sweet affluence of love and song,
The rich results of the divine consents

Of man and earth, of world beloved and
lover,

The nectar and ambrosia are withheld;

Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers
From loneliest nook.

'Neath cloister'd boughs each floral bell that
swingeth,

And tolls its perfume on the passing air, Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth A call to prayer,—

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and
column

Attest the feebleness of mortal land,
But to that fane most catholic and solemn
Which God hath planned,—

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,
Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon
supply,
Its choir the winds and waves, its organ
thunder,

Its dome the sky.

There, amid solitude and shade, I wander
Through the green aisles, and, stretch'd
upon the sod,

Amid the silence reverently ponder
The ways of God.

H. W. Longfellow.

568. CREATION, Chain of.

Look round our world; behold the chain of
love

Combining all below and all above,
See plastic nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place,
Formed and impelled its neighbor to embrace.
See matter next, with various life endued,
Press to one centre still, the general good.
See dying vegetables life sustain,
See life dissolving vegetate again:

And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we All forms that perish other forms supply

thieves

And pirates of the universe, shut out
Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick

eyes,

The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,

Clouds shade the sun which will not tan our hay,

And nothing thrives to reach its natural
term;

And life, shorn of its venerable length,
Even at its greatest space is a defeat,
And dies in anger that it was a dupe;
And, in its highest noon and wantonness,
Is early frugal, like a beggar's child;
Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims
And prizes of ambition, checks its hand,
Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped,
Chilled with a miserly comparison
Of the toy's purchase with the length of life.

R. W. Emerson.

567. CREATION, Cathedral of.

Your voiceless lips, O flowers, are living preachers,

Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book,

(By turns we catch the vital breath and die);
Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole;
Connects each being, greatest with the least;
One all-extending, all-preserving Soul
Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast;
All served, all serving; nothing stands
alone;

The chain holds on, and where it ends, un-
known.

Has God, thou fool, worked solely for thy

good,

Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spread the flowery lawn.
Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat?
Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
The bounding steed you pompously bestride
Shares with his lord the pleasure and the
pride.

Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain?
The birds of heaven shall vindicate their

grain.

goose;

And just as short of reason he must fall
Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.
Grant that the powerful still the weak
control;

Be man the wit and tyrant of the whole:
Nature that tyrant checks; he only knows,
And helps, another creature's wants and woes.
Say will the falcon, stooping from above,
Smit with her varying plumage, spare the
dove?

Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings?
Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings?
Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods,
To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods;
For some his interest prompts him to provide,
For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride,
All feed on one vain patron, and enjoy
The extensive blessing of his luxury.
That very life his learned hunger craves,
He saves from famine, from the savage saves;
Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast,
And, till he ends the being, makes it blest;
Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the
pain,

Than favored man by touch ethereal slain.
The creature had his feast of life before;
Thou too must perish when thy feast is o'er!
Alexander Pope.

569. CREATION, Chaos at.

Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And heaven's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of nature, if a face;
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion'd, and unfram'd,
Of jarring seeds and justly chaos nam'd.
No sun was lighted up the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky;
Nor, pois'd, did on her own foundations lie:
Nor seas about the shores their arms had

thrown;

But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth un-
stable,

And water's dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was imprest;
All were confus'd, and each disturbed the

rest.

For hot and cold were in one body fix'd,
And soft with hard, and light with heavy,
mix'd.

But God, our Nature, while they thus con-
tend,

To these intestine discords puts an end.

Then earth from air, and seas from earth
were driven,

And grosser air sank from ethereal heaven.
Ovid, tr. by John Dryden.

With what an awful world-revolving power
570. CREATION, Conservation of.
Were first the unwieldy planets launched
along

Amid the flux of many thousand years,
The illimitable void! Thus to remain,
That oft had swept the toiling race of men
And all their labored monuments away,
Firm, unremitting, matchless, in their course;
To the kind-tempered change of night and
day,

And of the seasons, ever stealing round
That poised, impels, and rules the steady
Minutely faithful; such the All-perfect Hand,

whole.

James Thomson.

571. CREATION, Description of the.

Meanwhile the Son
On His great expedition now appear'd,
Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crown'd
Of majesty divine; sapience and love
Immense, and all His Father in Him shone.
About His chariot numberless were pour'd
Cherub and seraph, potentates and thrones,
And virtues, wing'd spirits, and chariots
wing'd

From th' armory of God, where stand of old
Myriads between two brazen mountains lodg'd
Against a solemn day, harness'd at hand,
Celestial equipage; and now came forth
Spontaneous, for within them spirits liv'd,
Attendant on their Lord: heaven open'd wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound
On golden hinges moving, to let forth
The King of Glory in His pow'rful word
And spirit coming to create new worlds.
On heavenly ground they stood, and from
the shore

They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss,
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
Up from the bottom turn'd by furious winds
And surging waves, as mountains, to assault
Heav'n's height, and with the centre mix the
pole.

Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou deep,

peace,

Said then th' omnific Word, your discord
end;

Nor stay'd, but on the wings of cherubim
Uplifted, in paternal glory rode
Far into Chaos, and the world unborn.
For Chaos heard His voice: Him all His train
Follow'd in bright procession to behold
Creation, and the wonders of His might.
Then stay'd the fervid wheels, and in His
hand

He took the golden compasses, prepar'd
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe, and all created things:
One foot He centred, and the other turn'd
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, Thus far extend, thus far thy

bounds,

On the green stem; God saw that it was good:

So ev❜n and morn recorded the third day.
Again the Almighty spake, Let there be
lights

High in th' expanse of heaven to divide
The day from night; and let them be for
signs,

For seasons, and for days, and circling years,
And let them be for lights as I ordain
Their office in the firmament of heav'n
To give light on the earth; and it was so.
And God made two great lights, great for
their use

To man, the greater to have rule by day,
The less by night altern: and made the stars,
And set them in the firmament of heav'n
T'illuminate the earth and rule the day
In their vicissitude, and rule the night,
And light from darkness to divide. God saw;
Surveying His great work, that it was good:
For of celestial bodies, first the sun
A mighty sphere He fram'd, unlightsome first,
Though of ethereal mould: then form'd the

moon

Globose, and every magnitude of stars,

Display'd on th' open firmament of heav'n.
And God created the great whales, and each
Soul living, each that crept, which plenteously
The waters generated by their kinds,
And every bird of wing after his kind;
And saw that it was good, and bless'd them,
saying,

Be fruitful, multiply, and in the seas
And lakes and running streams the waters fill:
And let the fowl be multiply'd on th' earth.
Forthwith the sounds and seas, cach creek
and bay

With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals
Of fish that with their fins and shining scales
Glide under the green wave, in sculls that oft
Bank the mid sea: part single or with mate
Graze the sea-weed their pasture, and through
groves

Of coral stray, or sporting with quick glance
Show to the sun their wav'd coats dropt with
gold

Or in their pearly shells at ease, attend
Moist nutriment, or under rocks their food
In jointed armor watch: on smooth the seal,
And bended dolphins play: part huge of bulk
Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,

And sow'd with stars the heav'n thick as a Tempest the ocean: there leviathan,

field.

Of light by far the greater part He took,
Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and
plac'd

In the sun's orb, made porous to receive
And drink the liquid light, firm to retain
Her gather'd beams, great palace now of light.
Hither as to their fountain other stars
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light,
And hence the morning planet gilds her
horns;

By tincture or reflection they augment
Their small peculiar, though from human
sight

So far remote, with diminution seen.
First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,
Regent of day, and all th' horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through heav'n's high road;

the gray

Dawn and the Pleiades before him danc'd,
Shedding sweet influence; less bright the

moon,

But opposite in levell'd west was set
His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
From him, for other light she needed none
In that aspect, and still that distance keeps
Till night, then in the east her turn she shines,
Revolv'd on heav'n's great axle, and her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousands stars, that then ap-
pear'd

Spangling the hemisphere: then first adorn'd
With their bright luminaries that set and rose,
Glad evening and glad morn crown'd the
fourth day.

And God said, Let the waters generate
Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul:
And let fowl fly above the earth, with wings

Hugest of living creatures, on the deep
Stretched like a promontory, sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land, and at his gills
Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.
Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens and
shores

Their brood as numerous hatch, from th'
egg that soon

Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclos'd Their callow young, but feathered soon and fledge

They summ'd their pens, and soaring the air
sublime

With clang despis'd the ground, under a cloud
In prospect; there the eagle and the stork
On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build;
Part loosely wing the region, part more wise
In common, rang'd in figure, wedge their

ways

Intelligent of seasons, and set forth
Their airy caravan high over seas
Flying, and over lands with mutual wing
Easing their flight; steers the prudent crane
Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air
Floats as they pass, fann'd with unnumber'd
plumes

From branch to branch the smaller birds with
song

Solac'd the woods, and spread their painted wings

Till ev'n, nor then the solemn nightingale
Ceas'd warbling, but all night tun'd her soft
lays:

Others on silver lakes and rivers bath'd
Their downy breast: the swan with arch'd
neck

Between her white wings mantling proudly,

rows

Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit