Rolling planet, flaming sun,

Stand in nobler man complete;
Prescient laws Thine errands run,

Frame the shrine for Godhead meet.

Homeward led, the wondering eye

Upward yearned in joy or awe,
Found the love that waited nigh,

Guidance of Thy guardian Law.
In the touch of earth it thrilled;

Down from mystic skies it burned;
Right obeyed and passion stilled

Its eternal gladness earned.

Breathing in the thinker's creed,

Pulsing in the hero's blood,
Nerving simplest thought and deed,

Freshening time with truth and good,

Consecrating art and song,

Holy book and pilgrim track,
Hurling floods of tyrant wrong

From the sacred limits back, -
Life of Ages, richly poured,

Love of God, unspent and free,
Flow still in the Prophet's word
And the People's liberty!

Samuel Johnson (1822–1882]

I IN THEE, AND THOU IN ME I AM but clay in thy hands; but thou art the all-loving artist;

Passive I lie in thy sight, yet in my selfhood I strive So to embody the life and love thou ever impartest

That in my spheres of the finite I may be truly alive. Knowing thou needest this form, as I thy divine inspiration, Knowing thou shapest the clay with a vision and purpose

divine, So would I answer each touch of thy hand in its loving creation,

That in my conscious life thy power and beauty may shine. Reflecting the noble intent thou hast in forming thy crea

tures; Waking from sense into life of the soul, and the image of

thee; Working with thee in thy work to model humanity's features Into the likeness of God, myself from myself I would

free.

One with all human existence, no one above or below me;
Lit by thy wisdom and love, as roses are steeped in the

morn; Growing from clay to statue, from statue to flesh, till thou

know me Wrought into manhood celestial, and in thine image re

born.

So in thy love will I trust, bringing me sooner or later
Past the dark screen that divides these shows of the finite

from thee. Thine, thine only, this warm dear life, O loving Creator! Thine the invisible future, born of the present, must be.

Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813–1892)

GNOSIS

THOUGHT is deeper than all speech,

Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach

What unto themselves was taught

We are spirits clad in veils;

Man by man was never seen;
All our deep communing fails

To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known;

Mind with mind did never meet;
We are columns left alone

Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars that gem the sky,

Far apart, though seeming near, In our light we scattered lie;

All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company

But a babbling summer stream? What our wise philosophy

But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the sun of love

Melts the scattered stars of thought, Only when we live above

What the dim-eyed world hath taught,

Only when our souls are fed

By the fount which gave them birth, And by inspiration led

Which they never drew from earth,

We, like parted drops of rain,

Swelling till they meet and run, Shall be all absorbed again, Melting, flowing into one.

Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813-1892]

THE FUTURE

What may we take into the vast Forever?

That marble door
Admits no fruit of all our long endeavor,

No fame-wreathed crown we wore,
No garnered lore.

What can we bear beyond the unknown portal?

No gold, no gains
Of all our toiling: in the life immortal

No hoarded wealth remains,
Nor gilds, nor stains.

Naked from out that far abyss behind us

We entered here:
No word came with our coming, to remind us

What wondrous world was near,
No hope, no fear.

Into the silent, starless Night before us,

Naked we glide:
No hand has mapped the constellations o'er us,

No comrade at our side,
No chart, no guide.

Yet fearless toward that midnight, black and hollow,

Our footsteps fare;
The beckoning of a Father's hand we follow-

His love alone is there,
No curse, no care.

Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1887] A MIND CONTENT

JOG ON, JOG ON”

From “The Winter's Tale "

Jos on, jog on the foot-path way,

And merrily hent the stile-a; A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616]

ON A CONTENTED MIND

WHEN all is done and said,

In the end this shall you find: He most of all doth bathe in bliss

That hath a quiet mind;
And, clear from worldly cares,

To deem can be content
The sweetest time in all his life

In thinking to be spent.

The body subject is

To fickle Fortune's power,
And to a million of mishaps

Is casual every hour;
And Death in time doth change

It to a clod of clay;
When as the mind, which is divine,

Runs never to decay.

Companion none is like

Unto the mind alone,
For many have been harmed by speech,

Through thinking, few, or none.