Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers,--
For this, for everything, we are out of tune.

Sometimes; not always, thank God! Look again: there are
the mountains, and above them the mournful glories of the
anti-sunset; the mute and golden trumpetings of the dawn;
--there is the sea, and over it the wistfulness and pomp
and pageantry of the setting sun, and the gentleness of heaven
at evening;--there is the whole drama of Day with its tremendous
glories; and the huge mystery of Night-time: Niobe Night,
silent in the heavens,

"Glittering magnificently unperturbed;"

--and there are the flowers in the garden, those _Praelarissimi_
and _Nobilisimi_ in the Court of God, the Pansy, the Blue
Larkspur, the Purple Anemone;--and what are all these things?--
Just symbols; just mirrorings of a beauty in the World of Ideas
within; just places where the Spirit has touched matter, and
matter, at that fiery and creative touch, has flamed up into the
likeness of God, which is Beauty.--What is Vision?--It is to have
luminous forms rising in the imagination, like Wordsworth had,
like Shelley; it is with shut eyes to see the beauty and wonder
of the Gods; it is to have no grayness or dearth or darkness
within; but to have the 'bliss of solitude' crowded with
beautiful squadrons of deities, trembling with the light of
legions on legions of suns. For:

Not all we are here
Where this darkness oppresses us;
Not this oblivion
Of Beauty expresses us.

Gaze not on it,
To be stained with its stain;
The Lonely All-Beautiful
Calls us again.

In galleried palaces,
Turquoise blue,
With the sweetness of many suns
Filtering through,--

In the Suns's own garden,
Where galaxies flame
For lilac and daffodil,
Each on his stem,--

Where apple-bloom Capricorn
Hangs from his tree,
Glittering dim o'er
The dim blue sea,--

And billowing dim o'er
The dim blue lawns
Of heaven come the nebular
Sunsets and dawns,--

We too have the regallest
Part of our being,
Far beyond dreaming of,
Hearing of, seeing.

And the Lonely All-Beautiful
Calls to us here:--
"My knights, my com