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Know'st thou what wove yon wood bird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell?
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads ?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
As the best gem upon her zone;
And Morning opes with haste her lids,
To gaze upon the Pyramids;

O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye;
For, out of Thought's interior sphere,
These wonders rose to upper air;
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the grass;
Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
And the same power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.

The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the fathers wise, -.
The Book itself before me lies,
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines.
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowled portrait dear;
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.

THE VISIT.

ASKEST, How long thou shalt stay'?
Devastator of the day!

Know, each substance, and relation,
Thorough nature's operation,
Hath its unit, bound, and metre ;
And every new compound
Is some product and repeater,
Product of the earlier found.
But the unit of the visit,
The encounter of the wise,
Say, what other metre is it

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Than the meeting of the eyes?

Nature poureth into nature

Through the channels of that feature

Riding on the ray of sight,

Fleeter far than whirlwinds go,

Or for service, or delight,

Hearts to hearts their meaning show,

Sum their long experience,

And import intelligence.

Single look has drained the breast;

Single moment years confessed.

The duration of a glance

Is the term of convenance,

And, though thy rede be church or state, Frugal multiplies of that.

Speeding Saturn cannot halt;

Linger, thou shalt rue the fault;

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If Love his moment overstay,
Hatred's swift repulsions play.

URIEL.

Ir fell in the ancient periods
Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coined itself
Into calendar months and days.

This was the lapse of Uriel,
Which in Paradise befell.

Once, among the Pleiads walking,
SAYD overheard the young gods talking;

And the treason, too long pent,
To his ears was evident.
The young deities discussed
Laws of form, and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth, and what seems.
One, with low tones that decide,
And doubt and reverend use defied,
With a look that solved the sphere,
And stirred the devils everywhere,
Gave his sentiment divine
Against the being of a line.
'Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn.'
As Uriel spoke with piercing eye,

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