Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1906-06-08
FROM THE GOLDEN BOOKS.
sherey's Hymn to intellectual Beauty.

sheley's Hymn to intellectual Beauty.
The awful shadow Of some unseen Power
Floats, though unseen among us; visit
ing
This various world with as inconstant
wing
AS summer winds that creep from flower
to flower;
Like moonbeams that behind some piny
mountain shower,
1t visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies Of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread
Like memory of music fed,
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for It's mystery.
Spirit Of Beauty, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost
shine upon
or human thought or form, where art
thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our
state,
This dim. vast vale of tears, vacant and
desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not forever
Weaves rainbows Ger yon mountain
river;
Why aught should fail and fade that once
Is shown;
why fear and dream and death and
birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom; why man hath such a
scope
For love and hate, dependency and hope!
No voice from some sublimer world hath
ever
To sage or poet these responses given;
Therefore the names Of demon, ghost,
and heaven,
Remain the record Of their vain endeavor:
Frail spells, whose uttered charm might
not avail to sever
From all we hear and all we see,
Doubt chance and mutability
Thy light alone, like mist DER mountains
driven.
Or music by the night wind sent
Through strings Of some still instru-
ment,
Or moonlight on midnight stream.
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet
dream.
Love, Hope and self-esteem. like clouds,
depart
And come. for some uncertain moments
lent.
Man were immortal and omnipotent,
Didst thou. unknown and awful as thou
art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state
Thou messenger Of sympathies
That wax and wane in lovers eyes;
Thou, that to human thought art nourish-
ment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came:
Depart not, lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear. dark reality.
While yet boy sought for ghosts and
sped
Through many a listening chamber.
cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps
pursuing
Hopes OF high talk with the departed
dead
l called on poisonous names with which
our youth is fed
was not heard: l saw them not:
When musing deeply on the lot
or life, at that sweet time when winds
are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News OF birds and poisoning.
Sudden thy shadow fell on me:
l shrieked. and clasped my hands in &C.
stasy!
1 vowed that would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine: Have 1 not kept the
vow?
with beating heart and streaming eyes,
even now
call the phantoms OF a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: They
haze in visloned bowers
OF studious zeal or loves delight
OutHatched with me the envious night:
They know that never JOY illumed my
brow,
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst
free
This world from its dark slavery
That thou, awful Lovelinessl
Wouldst give whateer these words can
not express.
The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past: There Is harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard
or seen,
AS II 1t could not be, as II 1t had not
been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
OF nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee.
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.