Ode to Heaven
Chorus of Spirits
FIRST SPIRIT
Palace roof of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!
Deep, immeasurable, vast,
Which art now and which wert then
Of the present and the past,
Of the eternal where and when,
Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever canopying dome
Of acts and ages yet to come!
Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earth’s company;
Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;
And green worlds that glide along;
And swift stars with flashing tresses;
And icy moons most cold and bright,
And mighty suns beyond the night,
Atoms of intensest light.
Even thy name is as a God,
Heaven! for thou art the abode
Of that power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature sees.
Generations as they pass
Worship thee with bended knees.
Their unremaining gods and they
Like a river roll away:
Thou remainest such alway.
SECOND SPIRIT
Thou art but the mind’s first chamber,
Round which its young fancies clamber,
Like weak insects in a cave,
Lighted up by stalactites;
By the portal of the grave,
Where a world of new delights
Will make thy best glories seem
But a dim and noonday gleam
From the shadow of a dream!