Book VI: Order

" Aerial walls of our wide world.
Built round my heart, a stifling tomb,
I would ye were asunder hurled.
And yielded me a little room !
Yon ample air-dome of our world
Weighs on me like the ponderous lead,
As in a nailed-down coffin curled
I cower, alive, alas ! not dead !
For if my lambs must suffer so,
Fall on me, pillars of great Earth !
Or let me breathe, O let me go
Where I may find for these new birth.
The wronged full-vindicated, blest,
And justice for the poor opprest ! . . .
The Heart disdains your message of the sense,
Demands the triumph of wronged innocence,
Demands to break up all the starry roof,
To rend and burn through )-on ethereal woof,
Claimeth to breathe in a Diviner day.
Where all her winter buds will find their
May.
Ah! what inspireth faith, and liope >ubliine.
If not One throned above your space and time ?
Gleams in the cloudy darkness of His feet,
Who, crowned with stars, hath sent the
Paraclete,
Dim, weary wanderings of our path to meet !
What ! if ambition, pride, lust, all my sin
Drag me from that high festival within !
Albeit I may never find the Grail,
Yet will I testify, before I fail,
Thoui:;h from afar, like Balaam, all is well
With God's own little ones, with Israel —
Yea, for Sandalphon waits on the high stair.
Ushering to Heaven every humble prayer ;
While Jesus, Mary, rise to lead them there.