A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass. Lowell Amy

LYRICAL POEMS

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Before the Altar

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      Before the Altar, bowed, he stands

       With empty hands;

       Upon it perfumed offerings burn

       Wreathing with smoke the sacrificial urn.

       Not one of all these has he given,

       No flame of his has leapt to Heaven

       Firesouled, vermilion-hearted,

       Forked, and darted,

       Consuming what a few spare pence

       Have cheaply bought, to fling from hence

       In idly-asked petition.

       His sole condition

       Love and poverty.

       And while the moon

       Swings slow across the sky,

       Athwart a waving pine tree,

       And soon

       Tips all the needles there

       With silver sparkles, bitterly

       He gazes, while his soul

       Grows hard with thinking of the poorness of his dole.

       "Shining and distant Goddess, hear my prayer

       Where you swim in the high air!

       With charity look down on me,

       Under this tree,

       Tending the gifts I have not brought,

       The rare and goodly things

       I have not sought.

       Instead, take from me all my life!

       "Upon the wings

       Of shimmering moonbeams

       I pack my poet's dreams

       For you.

       My wearying strife,

       My courage, my loss,

       Into the night I toss

       For you.

       Golden Divinity,

       Deign to look down on me

       Who so unworthily

       Offers to you:

       All life has known,

       Seeds withered unsown,

       Hopes turning quick to fears,

       Laughter which dies in tears.

       The shredded remnant of a man

       Is all the span

       And compass of my offering to you.

       "Empty and silent, I

       Kneel before your pure, calm majesty.

       On this stone, in this urn

       I pour my heart and watch it burn,

       Myself the sacrifice; but be

       Still unmoved: Divinity."

       From the altar, bathed in moonlight,

       The smoke rose straight in the quiet night.

Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keats's Poems

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      Wild little bird, who chose thee for a sign

       To put upon the cover of this book?

       Who heard thee singing in the distance dim,

       The vague, far greenness of the enshrouding wood,

       When the damp freshness of the morning earth

       Was full of pungent sweetness and thy song?

       Who followed over moss and twisted roots,

       And pushed through the wet leaves of trailing vines

       Where slanting sunbeams gleamed uncertainly,

       While ever clearer came the dropping notes,

       Until, at last, two widening trunks disclosed

       Thee singing on a spray of branching beech,

       Hidden, then seen; and always that same song

       Of joyful sweetness, rapture incarnate,

       Filled the hushed, rustling stillness of the wood?

       We do not know what bird thou art. Perhaps

       That fairy bird, fabled in island tale,

       Who never sings but once, and then his song

       Is of such fearful beauty that he dies

       From sheer exuberance of melody.

       For this they took thee, little bird, for this

       They captured thee, tilting among the leaves,

       And stamped thee for a