“The moon like a flower
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight,
Sits and smiles on the night.”
Night, st. 1
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)
" The Chantry Of The Cherubim http://www.bartleby.com/236/219.html" in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917) by D. H. S. Nicholson. <br class="br">Context: p>I walk as one unclothed of flesh,<br>I wash my spirit clean;<br>I see old miracles afresh,<br>And wonders yet unseen.<br>I will not leave Thee till Thou give<br>Some word whereby my soul may live!I listened — but no voice I heard;<br>I looked — no likeness saw;<br>Slowly the joy of flower and bird<br>Did like a tide withdraw;<br>And in the heaven a silent star<br>Smiled on me, infinitely far.</p
“The moon like a flower
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight,
Sits and smiles on the night.”
Night, st. 1
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
Part I, section 3.
Source: Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1840s, Past and Present (1843)
Context: Not a May-game is this man's life; but a battle and a march, a warfare with principalities and powers. No idle promenade through fragrant orange-groves and green flowery spaces, waited on by the choral Muses and the rosy Hours: it is a stern pilgrimage through burning sandy solitudes, through regions of thick-ribbed ice. He walks among men; loves men, with inexpressible soft pity,—as they cannot love him: but his soul dwells in solitude, in the uttermost parts of Creation. In green oases by the palm-tree wells, he rests a space; but anon he has to journey forward, escorted by the Terrors and the Splendours, the Archdemons and Archangels. All Heaven, all Pandemonium are his escort. The stars keen-glancing, from the Immensities, send tidings to him; the graves, silent with their dead, from the Eternities. Deep calls for him unto Deep.
Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921) British poet
"The Chantry Of The Cherubim" in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917) by D. H. S. Nicholson.
Context: p>I buoyed me on the wings of dream,
Above the world of sense;
I set my thought to sound the scheme,
And fathom the Immense;
I tuned my spirit as a lute
To catch wind-music wandering mute.Yet came there never voice nor sign;
But through my being stole
Sense of a Universe divine,
And knowledge of a soul
Perfected in the joy of things,
The star, the flower, the bird that sings.Nor I am more, nor less, than these;
All are one brotherhood;
I and all creatures, plants, and trees,
The living limbs of God;
And in an hour, as this, divine,
I feel the vast pulse throb in mine.</p
Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician
Song lyrics, Your Funeral… My Trial (1986), Your Funeral… My Trial
John Millington Synge (1871–1909) Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore
Prelude (1910).
William Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience
St. 5
1790s, The Tyger (1794)
Source: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
“MIRRORMENT
Birds are flowers flying
and flowers perched birds.”
A.R. Ammons (1926–2001) American poet
The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons (1991)