C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Author Unknown
Tranquillity
O
Till both the parching globes are pained,
At set of sun is balm for you;
Look up, and bathe them in the blue.
No need to count the coming stars,
Nor watch those wimpled pearly bars
That flush above the west; but follow
In idler mood the idle swallow,
With careless, half-unconscious eye,
Round his great circles on the sky,
Till he, and all things, lose for you
Their being in that depth of blue.
Till every pulsing nerve is pained,
In tranquil hours is balm for you;
Vex not the thoughts with false and true;
Be still and bathe them in the blue.
To every sad conviction throw
This grim defiance: “Be it so!”
To doubts that will not let you sleep,
This answer: “Wait! the truth will keep.”
And bruising days, the human brain
Draws wounded inward;—it might be
Some delicate creature of the sea,
That, shuddering, shrinks its lucent dome,
And coils its azure tendrils home,
And folds its filmy curtains tight,
At jarring contact, e’er so light;
But let it float away all free,
And feel the buoyant, supple sea
Among its tinted streamers swell,
Again it spreads its gauzy rings,
And, waving its wan fringes, swings
With rhythmic pulse its crystal bell.
The pressure of the trembling air
Keeps down to earth the shrunken mind.
Set free the smothered thought, and find
Beyond our world a vaster place,
To thrill and vibrate out through space;
As some auroral banner streams
Up through the night in widening gleams,
And floats and flashes o’er our dreams;
There let the whirling planet fall
Down—down, till but a vanishing ball,
A misty gleam: and dwindled so,
Thyself, thy world, no trace can show;
Too small to have a care or woe
Or wish, apart from that one will
That doth His worlds with music fill.