Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1866-08-31

Tuned 70 JOY or pain.
And here the Star above US stands,
And here a trembling travellers hands
Bring humble gifts sgain:
0 Brothers first it hung above
Tne passiOn-heated city,
Like an eye that swims in love
Ere the tear drops iH pity
For the things the city shows the skies
Do draw the tears from angel-eyes.
1t beekoned me away; for there
1t saw no holy thought,
Heard but muffied Sabbath chime,
Like the bells of ship tiistraught,
Floating out from the fogs of sin,
Ger the waves of woe it was laundering in
II beckoned me away for there
No human music fills the ear;
But discords of conhuent woe
Through street and alley far and near,
Cries of souls thar are hurt and bleed
Meath the trampling feet of the city's greed.
Yet music "stin and sad,H they say,
Beats like pulse through us all;
But I never heard in the eity's roar
Aught but the fearful ewell and fall
OF hearts that are squirting their gore
Sure that is no music that God would prize
In the :. still, sad anthem that rolls 10
his skies
Sure no holy strains are heard
In the gurgling tide of woe;
Fen the Sunday hymns are choked down
In the hearts from which they flow,
Like sickly flames midst dampened smoke
They cannot to heaven 60.
If a myriad larks should burst their
throats
In hinging their music down,
The notes would fall like frosty flakes
On the heated hearts in the town:
Tho angels from God in raptrous throng
Should crowd its streets, 'twould be deaf
to their song.
Therefore the star still beckoned me on
To the days and scenes ED,
When simple hearts were fresh and young,
And their upturned eyes beheld
Lights in our Fathers house on high.
In its manifold windows far and nigh.
The days when of thought would stand
With still sdosilg ear
Nor blush to own that they listened tor
The music of the spheres -
Burting from our Fathers house
Upon hearts that viii list in fear.
To the days of Greece and the days of Rome
Such thoughts as these belong
o Brothers. our Star seemed going home
To the source from whence it sprung
To the source whence the Beautiful, True
and Good
Issue forth in torrent t-Aood
Yea, there it stood in the ancient sky,
Above the waves Of song;
And the tides of thought still followed it,
Ae ia rsdiauca hoated m
AS the ocean waves do fall and heave
Meath the monthly laws that the moon
doth give.
And minded me how in college days,
With nightly toll and pain,
We kept our eyes on the Grabbed text
With infinite throb OF brsin,
To catch but sight
OF those names of light,
Which the heart, not the head, saw plain
For still while gazed, the olden Greeks
Wake into life again;
No pedsnt's sneer need thwart me here
If speak of those ancient men;
| saw them not by the light of noon,
But like figures in tapestry lit by the moon.
How grandIy dim old Homer stood
Like cloud in the gathering sky,
Human-shaped but not understood,
Because it is in the sky
A cloudy head, whose dim profile
Battles our eyes, most eager skill.
A profile il is, because Homer's gaze
Did not rest on earth or heaven;
His eyes looked away TO an infinite place,
Bu. his ears to both were open:
Aud the thunderous sound Of heaven and
earth
He gathered them all, and poured them
forth
Thrsugh his mouths most stormy portal.
The Tragic Three, also see,
AS they bend in awful fear
Der humanity's sobbing heart
Pressed close against their ear
Oh how they tell. in their tragic way,
How the human heart must moan for aye.
And sappho's Tyre, with songs of fire,
Struck by her passionate hand,
Kept trembling time to her burning song,
While she showed how love is grand
In its native, undeiled glow,
Zen IN the channels Of sin to flow.
And many lesser poet flung
Their songs on the list'ning ear,
Like blossoms of spring that love to fling
Their life to the waiting air
All for every blossom-like song displaced
Their harp with nobler songs wers graced-
And last of all Cretona's son
Arose amidst the throng-
Yes, Plato's glorious Visage shone
With more than the FIRE Of song;
For this dcme-like brain, like the vault of
night
Blazed with thoughts of the infinite.
And TO hear him speak Of the mystic things
Made every heart stand still,
Till the infinite longing OF every heart
Flowed like a silent rill-
Lost in the muldtudiDous tides
His boundless mind doth fill.
For the Good, the Beautiful, the True
That pulse through the world from God,
He showed their laws to ebb and flow
Through our souls like spirit blood
As travellers traced old Nilus' course,
He traced these up to their mystic source
And ne found that their source was God.
o. friends, it is q fearful thing
TO think that one Of our kind
Thus scaled the invisible mount of God,
His invisible things to find,
While we, at its base, reject the grace
Thst falls upon every upturned face
Yea, and we talk of Beauty aud Love,
And Trath, and Goodness, too,
As garralons gardeners talk of their flowers,
Not knowing whence their hue
Not knowing that every tint and shade
By the Suns eternal beams are made.
Yea, we turn away from the awful light
That Plates soul beheld,
Till cast athwsrt our wandering way
Shsdows Of our own derkened selves
Lead Us through life away from life
Far from the light Of day
On to the regions devoid Of thought,
Where nothing but darkness is infinite.
But our symbols never point that way:
Like the star that follows the sun
Shines its best az close of day,
Ere shades Of night come on.
The Evening Star, in the horizon light
Soitening away to the Infinite
Zen so our stsr in the heaven of thought
Keeps its ideal course,
I'll l.i i iixes our gaze on the softening rays,
That flow from the invisible source
OF sll that is beautiful, true and good,
Stretching away TO nfnitude.