To A Spirit

Spirit! in deathless halo zoned, A chain of stars with wings of diamond,-- Is music blended into thee With holy light and immortality? For, as thy shape of glory swept Through seas of darkness, magic breathings fell Around it, like the notes that slept In the wild caverns of a silver shell.

Thou camest, as a lightning spring Through chasms of horrid cloud, on scathless wing; Old Chaos round him, like a tiar, Swathed the long rush of immaterial fire; As thou, descending from afar, Wast canopied with living arch of light, Pale pillars of immortal star, Burst through the curtains of the moonless night.

Phantom of wonder! over thee, Trembles the shadow of the Deity; For face to face, on lifted throne, Thou gazest to the glory-shrouded One, Where highest in the azure height Of universe, eternally he turns Myriads of worlds; with blaze of light Filling the hollow of their golden urns.

Why comest thou, with feelings bound On thy birth-shore, the long unenter'd ground? To visit where thy being first, Through the pale shell of embryo nothing, burst? Or, on celestial errand bent, To win to faith a sin enraptured son, And point the angel lineament Of mercy on a cross,--the Bleeding One?

Spirit! I breathe no sad adieu: The altars where thou bendest never knew Sigh, tear, or sorrow, and the night No chariot drives behind the wheel of light; Where every seraph is a sun, And every soul an everlasting star.-- Go to thy home, thou peerless one! Where glory and the Great Immortal are!