Classic Poem

Shelf over shelf the mountain rose;
And, as we climbed, they seemed the stair
That scales a minster's wall to seek
Some high-hid cell of prayer.

But every stair was carpeted
With mosses soft of gray and green,
And gold and crimson arabesques
Trailed in and out between.

Up, up, o'er ferny pavements still,
O'er dim mosaics of the wood,
O'er rocky terraces, we trod,
Till on the height we stood.

About the ancient mountain-walls
The silent wildernesses clung;
In solemn frescos, moving slow,
The clouds their shadows flung.

Along the valley-deeps below
The shimmer of a forest floor, —
A leafy brightness, like the sea,
Wide twinkling o'er and o'er.

Niched in the mighty minster, we,
Beneath the dome of radiant blue:
Cathedral-hush on every side,
And worship breathing through!

There came wild music on the winds,
The chanting of the forest choir,
Shaken across the ranged hills
As over a chorded lyre.

Then pauses as for quiet prayer,
And lulls, in which the listeners heard
Home-voices speak, while faces neared
Swifter than any bird.

Of Strength eternal, by whose will
The hills their steadfast places keep,
Whose Right is like the mountains high,
Whose Judgments are a deep, —

In grand old Bible verse we spoke,
And following close like echoes sped
The poems best beloved. The words
Along the silence fled.

The Silence, awful Living Word
Behind all sound, behind all thought,
Whose speech is Nature-yet-to-be,
The Poem yet unwrought!

That day 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,
As flowed the lesson for the day, —
" Order is Beauty; Law is Love;
Childlike his worlds obey."

And all the heaven seemed folding down
Above the shining earth's sweet face,
Till in our hearts they touched! We felt
The thrill of their embrace.

Then, in its peace, we wandered down
Our rocky staircase from the height;
On dim mosaics of the wood
We met the climbing Night.