Were all my loud, evil[150] days
Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,
Whose peace but by some angel's wing or voice
Is seldom rent,
Then I in heaven all the long year
Would keep, and never wander here.
But living where the sun
Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire
Themselves and others, I consent and run
To every mire;
And by this world's ill guiding light,
Err more than I can do by night
There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness; as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear:
O for that night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim!
This is glorious; and its lesson of quiet and retirement we need more
than ever in these hurried days upon which we have fallen. If men would
but be still enough in themselves to hear, through all the noises of the
busy light, the voice that is ever talking on in the dusky chambers of
their hearts! Look at his love for Nature, too; and read the fourth
stanza in connexion with my previous remarks upon symbolism. I think this
poem _grander_ than any of George Herbert's. I use the word with intended
precision.
Here is one, the end of which is not so good, poetically considered, as
the magnificent beginning, but which contains striking lines
throughout:--
THE DAWNING.
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