Page:Zinzendorff and Other Poems.pdf/231

Came through Heaven's portal. High her vestal train
Did bear their brilliant cressets in their hands,
Trembling with pride and pleasure. Beauty lay,
Like a broad mantle, on each slumbering dell,
And to the domes that peered through woven shades,
Gave attic grace. But on one roof, the eye
Did gaze instinctively, singling it out
From all this flood of loveliness, as turns
The mariner to some fair isle of rest,
Calling it home. I love to see thee raise
Thy stainless forehead through the sheltering elm,
Sequestered mansion. Other forms than those
That I have reared, may in thy nursery play,
Yet ne'er will I forget thee. Stranger-tones
May wake the echoes of thine airy halls,
And other names than his, whose classic taste
Reared thy pure columns, and thy haunts adorned,
May claim thy mastership: for change doth write
With Protean pencil, on all things that man
Would call his own.
                               It is not meet that earth
Or aught of earthly heritage, assume
Heaven's feature of duration. Yet 'tis sweet,
On Nature's beauteous page, to read of God,
And I would bear the picture in my heart
Of these sweet woods and waters, summer-drest
And angel-voiced, until I lay me down
On the low pillow of my last repose.