Lines on a Re-reading of Parts of the Old Testament

Sublimity Sublimity! I lay thee down ;
Great Volume of the ages ! older far
Than Cheops' Pyramid or the Parthenon ;
And yet as new as yester-even's star,
That came and burned so bright and pure, across
The world's great weariness and day's decline.
What are all earth's ambitions, gain and loss,
Her hopes ephemeral ; when thou art mine ?
Thou stand'st, a crystal well of water pure,
Amid those fevered fonts of heathen wine,
Graven in truth's deep rock that shall endure,
So greatly human, yet so all divine !

This age doth press upon me like a vast,
Grim adamantine wall of evil doom ;
But when I drink thy living draught, I cast
Aside this vesture of material gloom ;

These curtains of mortality fall apart ;
And out, and up, beyond, eternally,
Those stairways of God's ages ; and man's part
In all that greatness, gone, and yet to be !