The ardor of his blinding blaze? 
  Who loves thee that thou art the sun’s? 
  Who does not give thee sweetest praise
  Among the troop of shining ones
  That sweep along the heavenly ways?

  “Yet still within the holy place
  The altar sanctifies the gift! 
  Poor, precious gift, that begs for grace! 
  Oh towering altar! that doth lift
  The gift so high, that, in its face,

  It bears no beauty to the thought
  Of those who round the altar stand! 
  Poor, precious gift, that goes for naught
  From willing heart and ready hand,
  And wins no favor unbesought!

  “The stars are whiter for the blue;
  The sky is deeper for the stars;
  They give and take in commerce true,
  And lend their beauty to the cars
  Of downy dusk, that all night through,

  Roll o’er the void on silver wheels;
  Yet neither starry sky nor cloud
  Is loved the less that it reveals
  A beauty all its own, endowed
  By all the wealth its beauty steals.

  “Am I a dew-drop in a rose,
  With no significance apart? 
  Must I but sparkle in repose
  Close to its folded, fragrant, heart,
  Its peerless beauty to disclose?

  “Would I not toil to win his bread,
  And give him all I have to give? 
  Would I not die in his sweet stead,
  And die in joy?  But I must live;
  And, living, I must still be fed

  On love that comes in love’s own right. 
  They must not pet, or pamper me—­
  Those who rejoice beneath his light—­
  Or pity him, that I can be
  So precious in his princely sight.”

  With swifter wings, through heart and brain,
  The little hour unheeded flew;
  And when, behind the blazoned stain
  Of saintly vestures, red and blue,
  The lights on rose and window-pane

  Within the chapel slowly died,
  And figures muffled by the moon
  Went shuffling home on either side—­
  One seeking her—­she said:  How soon! 
  And then the pastor kissed his bride.

  V.

  The bright night brightened into dawn;
  The shadows down the mountain passed;
  And tree and shrub and sloping lawn,
  With bending, beaded beauty glassed
  In myriad suns the sun that shone!

  The robin fed her nested young;
  The swallows bickered ’neath the eaves;
  The hang-bird in her hammock swung,
  And, tilting high among the leaves,
  Her red mate sang alone, or flung

  The dew-drops on her lifted head;
  While on the grasses, white and far,
  The tents of fairy hosts were spread
  That, scared before the morning star,
  Had left their reeking camp, and fled.

  The pigeon preened his opal breast;
  And o’er the meads the bobolink,
  With vexed perplexity confessed
  His tinkling gutturals in a kink,
  Or giggled round his secret nest.