George Willis Cooke, comp. The Poets of Transcendentalism: An Anthology. 1903.
The Word of GodWilliam Channing Gannett (18401923)
I
Soul answering to soul;
It kindles on the pages
Of every Bible scroll;
The psalmists heard and sang it,
From martyr-lips it broke,
And prophet-tongues outrang it
Till sleeping nations woke.
It breathed from Buddha’s tree,
It charmed in Athens’ market,
It gladdened Galilee;
The hammer-stroke of Luther,
The Pilgrims’ seaside prayer,
The oracles of Concord,
One holy Word declare.
Itself it knows not time:
Man’s laws but catch the music
Of its eternal chime.
It calls—and lo, new Justice!
It speaks—and lo, new Truth!
In ever nobler stature
And unexhausted youth.
Recks not of small and great;
It shapes the unborn atom,
It tells the sun its fate.
The wingbeat of archangel
Its boundary never nears:
Forever on it soundeth
The music of the spheres!