DEVOTIONAL INCITEMENTS
“Not to the earth confined, Ascend to heaven.” WHERE will they stop, those breathing Powers, The Spirits of the new-born flowers? They wander with the breeze, they wind Where’er the streams a passage find; Up from their native ground they rise In mute aerial harmonies; From humble violet–modest thyme– Exhaled, the essential odours climb, As if no space below the sky Their subtle flight could satisfy: 10 Heaven will not tax our thoughts with pride If like ambition be ‘their’ guide. Roused by this kindliest of May-showers, The spirit-quickener of the flowers, That with moist virtue softly cleaves The buds, and freshens the young leaves, The birds pour forth their souls in notes Of rapture from a thousand throats– Here checked by too impetuous haste, While there the music runs to waste, 20 With bounty more and more enlarged, Till the whole air is overcharged; Give ear, O Man! to their appeal And thirst for no inferior zeal, Thou, who canst ‘think’, as well as feel. Mount from the earth; aspire! aspire! So pleads the town’s cathedral quire, In strains that from their solemn height Sink, to attain a loftier flight; While incense from the altar breathes 30 Rich fragrance in embodied wreaths; Or, flung from swinging censer, shrouds The taper-lights, and curls in clouds Around angelic Forms, the still Creation of the painter’s skill, That on the service wait concealed One moment, and the next revealed –Cast off your bonds, awake, arise, And for no transient ecstasies! What else can mean the visual plea 40 Of still or moving imagery– The iterated summons loud, Not wasted on the attendant crowd, Nor wholly lost upon the throng Hurrying the busy streets along? Alas! the sanctities combined By art to unsensualise the mind, Decay and languish; or, as creeds And humours change, are spurned like weeds: The priests are from their altars thrust; 50 Temples are levelled with the dust; And solemn rites and awful forms Founder amid fanatic storms. Yet evermore, through years renewed In undisturbed vicissitude Of seasons balancing their flight On the swift wings of day and night, Kind Nature keeps a heavenly door Wide open for the scattered Poor. Where flower-breathed incense to the skies 60 Is wafted in mute harmonies; And ground fresh-cloven by the plough Is fragrant with a humbler vow; Where birds and brooks from leafy dells Chime forth unwearied canticles, And vapours magnify and spread The glory of the sun’s bright head– Still constant in her worship, still Conforming to the eternal Will, Whether men sow or reap the fields, 70 Divine monition Nature yields, That not by bread alone we live, Or what a hand of flesh can give; That every day should leave some part Free for a sabbath of the heart: So shall the seventh be truly blest, From morn to eve, with hallowed rest. 1832.