Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Via Crucis (1906). IV. Who will show us any goodWilliam Hall (1838 )
Selected Stanzas
W
The slumbering pupa of the worm,
The keen and cunning eye detects
The winged imago’s embryo form:
Look but attentively beneath
Integument and covering,—
Thou’lt see, close folded in their sheath,
The rudiments of foot and wing.
Supplies like singular augury;
Therein we find the guiding clue
To all he’s fore-ordained to be:
It needs no cunning eye therein
To read presumptively his fate,
Some forecast of his future win,
His goal and scope anticipate.
Or wing some special use foretell;
The embryo members, shut within
The safe enclosure of the shell,
Predict the noble life and free
The full-developed bird awaits,
The blissful, rapturous ecstacy
It yet shall share in with its mates.
Its true connatural element,
Whether of ocean, air, or earth,
Towards which, its vesicle but rent,
Forthwith precipitate it speeds,
Nor will by ought be turned aside,
For thence alone the pressing needs
Wherewith it wakes can be supplied.