THEOPHANY

EVELYN UNDERHILL

Deep cradled in the fringed mow to lie
And feel the rhythmic flux of life sweep by,
This is to know the easy heaven that waits
Before our timidly-embattled gates:

To show the exultant leap and thrust of things
Outward toward perfection, in the heart
Of every bud to see the folded wings,
Discern the patient whole in every part.

THE DWELLING PLACE

HENRY VAUGHN

What happy secret fountain,

Fair shade or mountain,

Whose undiscovered virgin glory

Boasts it this day, though not in story,
Was then thy dwelling? did some cloud
Fix'd to a tent, descend and shroud
My distrest Lord? or did a star,
Beckoned by thee, though high and far,
In sparkling smiles haste gladly down
To lodge light and increase her own?
My dear, dear God! I do not know
What lodged thee then, nor where, nor how;
But I am sure thou now dost come

Oft to a narrow, homely room,

Where thou too hast but the least part,

My God, I mean my sinful heart.

HEALTH OF BODY DEPENDENT ON SOUL

JONES VERY

Not from the earth, or skies,

Or seasons as they roll,

Come health and vigor to the frame,

But from the living soul.

Is this alive to God,

And not the slave to sin?
Then will the body, too, receive
Health from the soul within.

But if disease has touched

The spirit's inmost part,

In vain we seek from outward things
To heal the deadly smart.

The mind, the heart unchanged,

Which clouded e'en our home,
Will make the outward world the same,
Where'er our feet may roam.

The fairest scenes on earth,

The mildest, purest sky,
Will bring no vigor to the step,
No lustre to the eye.

For He who formed our frame
Made man a perfect whole,
And made the body's health depend
Upon the living soul.

THE LIGHT FROM WITHIN

JONES VERY

I saw on earth another light
Than that which lit my eye
Come forth as from my soul within,
And from a higher sky.

Its beams shone still unclouded on,
When in the farthest west

The sun I once had known had sunk
Forever to his rest.

And on I walked, though dark the night,

Nor rose his orb by day;

As one who by a surer guide
Was pointed out the way.

'Twas brighter far than noonday's beam;
It shone from God within,

And lit, as by a lamp from heaven,
The world's track of sin.

SONG OF MYSELF

WALT WHITMAN

From Leaves of Grass

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,

Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,

I find letters from God dropped in the street-and every one is signed by God's name,

And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.

Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The not-incurious in God's handiwork

(This man's flesh He hath admirably made,
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,
To coop up and keep down on earth a space
That puff of vapor from His mouth, man's soul)
-To Abib, all-sagacious in our art,

Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,

Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks

Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain,

Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip

Back and rejoin its source before the term,—

And aptest in contrivance, under God,

To baffle it by deftly stopping such:

The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home

Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)

Three samples of true snake-stone-rarer still,

One of the other sort, the melon-shaped,

(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)
And writeth now the twenty-second time.
My journeyings were brought to Jericho,
Thus I resume. Who studious in our art
Shall count a little labor unrepaid?

I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone
On many a flinty furlong of this land.
Also the country-side is all on fire
With rumors of a marching hitherward-
Some say Vespasian cometh, some his son.
A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;
Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:
I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.
Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,
And once a town declared me for a spy,
But at the end I reached Jerusalem,

Since this poor covert where I pass the night,
This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence
A man with plague-sores at the third degree
Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughtest here:
'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,
To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip

And share with thee whatever Jewry yields.
A viscid choler is observable

In tertians, I was nearly bold to say,

And falling-sickness hath a happier cure

Than our school wots of: there's a spider here
Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,

Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back;

Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind, The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to?

His service payeth me a sublimate

Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye.

Best wait: reach Jerusalem at morn,

There set in order my experiences,

Gather what most deserves and give thee all-
Or, I might add, Judea's gum-tragacanth

Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,
Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry,
In fine, exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease,