The Angel of Thought and Other Poems Impressions from Old Masters

Excerpt

THE ANGEL OF THOUGHT

(Suggested by a Fra Angelico Angel)

Angel of Thought, meseems God winged thee so,

And crowned thine head with passion fine as flame,

And made thy lifted face too pure for shame,

With eyes and brow a mirror to His glow;—

And gave thy lips a golden trump, that, though

Long years have passed since other angels came

To work the mighty wonders of His name,—

In God's own name and man's, thyself shalt go

Forever on strong pinions to and fro,

And round the earth reverberating blow

The mute, world-shaking music of the mind;

That thou might'st make as naught all space and time,

And thrill in mystic oneness through mankind,

Yet dwell in each, inviolate, sublime.

I

Kneeling in prayer, her spirit rapt above,

She meets with God, Who bendeth, brooding low,

In vast compassion humanward, and so,

There comes upon her life the power of Love:

Rising—behold! with pinions like a dove,

An angel with a rod where row on row

Of chaliced lilies spill supernal glow,—

Which all her thought to wonder mute doth move.

Then falls upon the rapture of her soul,

Dimly some vision of Gethsemane,

Athwart the Resurrection's shining goal,

And with uplifted hand she pleads as One

Shall pray in night of darkest agony,

"This cup remove,—yet, Lord, Thy Will be done."

ANNUNCIATION

(From a picture by Botticelli)

II

Immortal eloquence of mystic Art!

How strangely o'er oblivion and gray time,

That hand doth speak, as in the painter's prime

It uttered thus his own and Mary's heart,

At sight of it, what rich conjectures start,

Adown the years, what wistful Aves chime,

That wake the soul to rapture how sublime,

Wherewith we, too, must bear in Him our part!

For unto each to bring redemption's share,

Whereby adown the ages Christ is borne,

There comes the angel of the lilied rod;

And though our souls with anguish sore are torn,

We pray once more the world-o'ercoming prayer,

And then is born in us the Word of God.

The mountains wonder from their cloudy height,

The skies look on and grow more deep with awe;

From these two women, earthly loves withdraw,

And leave them shrined in some ensphering light,—

More fine than that which greets the earthly sight,

More glorious than that Creation saw,

When, from abeyance to primeval law,

There burst the dawn from out the womb of night;

Yet are all things unchanged around them,—these,

The ancient hills, the town, the quiet trees,

The household presences through which they grope

Blind to all else but to each other's eyes,

Wherein, transforming heaven and earth, there lies

Sublime effulgence of immortal Hope.

A BOTTICELLI MADONNA

I

THE WONDERING ANGELS

Behold!...