The greatest for its greatness is half known,
Stretching beyond our narrow quadrant-lines,--
As in that world of Nature all outgrown
Where Calaveras lifts his awful pines,
And cast from Mariposa's mountain-wall
Nevada's cataracts fall.
Yet heaven's remotest orb is partly ours,
Throbbing its radiance like a beating heart;
In the wide compass of angelic powers
The instinct of the blindworm has its part;
So in God's kingliest creature we behold
The flower our buds infold.
With no vain praise we mock the stone-carved name
Stamped once on dust that moved with pulse and breath,
As thinking to enlarge that amplest fame
Whose undimmed glories gild the night of death:
We praise not star or sun; in these we see
Thee, Father, only Thee!
Thy gifts are beauty, wisdom, power, and love:
We read, we reverence on this human soul,--
Earth's clearest mirror of the light above,--
Plain as the record on Thy prophet's scroll,
When o'er his page the effluent splendors poured,
Thine own, "Thus saith the Lord!"
This player was a prophet from on high,
Thine own elected. Statesman, poet, sage,
For him Thy sovereign pleasure passed them by,--
Sidney's fair youth, and Raleigh's ripened age,
Spenser's chaste soul, and his imperial mind
Who taught and shamed mankind.
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