Poems (May)/A fragment
For works with similar titles, see A Fragment.
A FRAGMENT.
Faith is seraph born, And mindful of her origin, most wise, For she has listened at the feet of Christ; Calm-hearted as an angel, for she keeps The trustfulness of childhood, as a sabbath Keeps the dawn's stillness. At her shining feet, Ah, then, be mute and listen, while she tells The chastened spirit what its pride of strength In vain petitions. All her words are pleasant As shadows by the way-side, and we bear Their memory with us as we pluck a branch From some green sheltering tree. And, through them fall, Like light through leaves, faint glimpses of a glory Yet unrevealed; some rays of that far sun That sends its shining to our distant hearts; Gleams of the time when man, that grand conception Unworthily embodied, shall stand forth As God pronounced him first, ere, like an echo, Through each reverberating age, he grew With repetition feebler and unlike The great original.