125 . Five Prayers

TO taste

Wild wine of the mountain-spring, fresh, living, strong,

Running and rushing like a triumph-song

Round hearts new-braced:

To smell

A growing cowslip, some glad morn of Spring,

And breathe the breath of every fragrant thing

From every bell:

To touch

A sliding wavelet, supple, smooth and thin,—

Just ere the pois’d and perfect crests begin

To bend too much:

To hear

Amid May twilight, by the murmuring sea,

Some blackbird warbling from a budded tree,

Tender and clear:

To see

Down young rose-petals how the deepening light

Glides gradually, till, somewhere out of sight,

What light must be!—

O Thou, intense

Rapture of Beauty! All-pervading Lord!

Is not this worship? So art Thou ador’d

By every sense!