I like 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 cowléd
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
Wrought in a sad
sincerity; Himself from God he could
not free; He builded better than he
knew;-- The conscious stone to beauty
grew.
Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's
nest Of leaves, and feathers from
her breast? Or how the fish outbuilt
her shell, Painting with morn each
annual cell? Or how the sacred
pine-tree adds To her old leaves new
myriads? Such and so grew these holy
piles, Whilst love and terror laid
the tiles. Earth proudly wears the
Parthenon, As the best gem upon her
zone, And Morning opes with haste
her lids To gaze upon the
Pyramids; O'er England's abbeys
bends the sky, As on its friends,
with kindred eye; For out of
Thought's interior sphere These
wonders rose to upper air; And
Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Arafat.
These temples grew as grows the
grass; Art might obey, but not
surpass. The passive Master lent his
hand To the vast soul that o'er him
planned; And the same power that
reared the shrine Bestrode the
tribes that knelt within. Ever the
fiery Pentecost Girds with one flame
the countless host, Trances the
heart through chanting choirs, And
through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the fathers wise,--
The Book itself before me lies,
Old , best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
, the Shakespeare of divines.
The words are music in my ear,
I see his cowléd portrait dear;
And yet, for all his faith could
see, I would not the good bishop
be.
November 10, 1839 [The Dial, 1840]
Criticism on "The Problem"
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