“What part or lot have you,” he said,
  “In these dull rites of drowsy-head? 
  Is silence worship?  Seek it where
  It soothes with dreams the summer air;
  Not in this close and rude-benched hall,
  But where soft lights and shadows fall,
  And all the slow, sleep-walking hours
  Glide soundless over grass and flowers! 
  From time and place and form apart,
  Its holy ground the human heart,
  Nor ritual-bound nor templeward
  Walks the free spirit of the Lord! 
  Our common Master did not pen
  His followers up from other men;
  His service liberty indeed,
  He built no church, he framed no creed;
  But while the saintly Pharisee
  Made broader his phylactery,
  As from the synagogue was seen
  The dusty-sandalled Nazarene
  Through ripening cornfields lead the way
  Upon the awful Sabbath day,
  His sermons were the healthful talk
  That shorter made the mountain-walk,
  His wayside texts were flowers and birds,
  Where mingled with his gracious words
  The rustle of the tamarisk-tree
  And ripple-wash of Galilee.”

  “Thy words are well, O friend,” I said;
  “Unmeasured and unlimited,
  With noiseless slide of stone to stone,
  The mystic Church of God has grown. 
  Invisible and silent stands
  The temple never made with hands,
  Unheard the voices still and small
  Of its unseen confessional. 
  He needs no special place of prayer
  Whose hearing ear is everywhere;
  He brings not back the childish days
  That ringed the earth with stones of praise,
  Roofed Karnak’s hall of gods, and laid
  The plinths of Philae’s colonnade. 
  Still less he owns the selfish good
  And sickly growth of solitude,—­
  The worthless grace that, out of sight,
  Flowers in the desert anchorite;
  Dissevered from the suffering whole,
  Love hath no power to save a soul. 
  Not out of Self, the origin
  And native air and soil of sin,
  The living waters spring and flow,
  The trees with leaves of healing grow.

  “Dream not, O friend, because I seek
  This quiet shelter twice a week,
  I better deem its pine-laid floor
  Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore;
  But nature is not solitude;
  She crowds us with her thronging wood;
  Her many hands reach out to us,
  Her many tongues are garrulous;
  Perpetual riddles of surprise
  She offers to our ears and eyes;
  She will not leave our senses still,
  But drags them captive at her will;
  And, making earth too great for heaven,
  She hides the Giver in the given.

  “And so I find it well to come
  For deeper rest to this still room,
  For here the habit of the soul
  Feels less the outer world’s control;
  The strength of mutual purpose pleads
  More earnestly our common needs;
  And from the silence multiplied
  By these still forms on either side,
  The world that time and sense have known
  Falls off and leaves us God alone.