The burdens of the Bible old;
    The litanies of nations came,
    Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,
    Up from the burning core below,—­
    The canticles of love and woe: 
    The hand that rounded Peter’s dome
    And groined the aisles of Christian Rome
    Wrought in a sad sincerity;
    Himself from God he could not free;
    He builded better than he knew;
    The conscious stone to beauty grew.

    Knowst thou what wove yon woodbird’s nest
    Of leaves and feathers from her breast? 
    Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
    Painting with morn each annual cell? 
    Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
    To her old leaves new myriads? 
    Such and so grew these holy piles,
    While love and terror laid the tiles. 
    Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
    As the best gem upon her zone,
    And Morning opes with haste her lids
    To gaze upon the Pyramids;
    O’er England’s abbeys bends the sky,
    As on its friends, with kindred eye;
    For out of Thought’s interior sphere
    These wonders rose to upper air;
    And Nature gladly gave them place,
    Adopted them into her race,
    And granted them an equal date
    With Andes and with Ararat.

    These temples grew as grows the grass;
    Art might obey, but not surpass. 
    The passive Master lent his hand
    To the vast soul that o’er him planned;
    And the same power that reared the shrine
    Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. 
    Ever the fiery Pentecost
    Girds with one flame the countless host,
    Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
    And through the priest the mind inspires. 
    The word unto the prophet spoken
    Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
    The word by seers or sibyls told,
    In groves of oak, or fanes of gold. 
    Still floats upon the morning wind,
    Still whispers to the willing mind. 
    One accent of the Holy Ghost
    The heedless world hath never lost. 
    I know what say the fathers wise,—­
    The Book itself before me lies,
    Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
    And he who blent both in his line,
    The younger Golden Lips or mines,
    Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines. 
    His words are music in my ear,
    I see his cowled portrait dear;
    And yet, for all his faith could see,
    I would not the good bishop be.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

 TO AMERICA.

“To America,” included by permission of the Poet Laureate, is a good poem and a great poem.  It is a keen thrust at the common practice of teaching American children to hate the English of these days on account of the actions of a silly old king dead a hundred years.  Alfred Austin deserves great credit for this poem.

        What is the voice I hear
          On the winds of the western sea? 
        Sentinel, listen from out Cape Clear
          And say what the voice may be. 
   ’Tis a proud free people calling loud to a people proud and free.