Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE WORLD by WILLIAM HAMMOND

First Line: IS THIS THAT GOODLY EDIFICE
Last Line: REFLECTED FROM THE GLASS DIVINE.
Is this that goodly edifice
So gaz'd upon by greedy eyes?
A scene where cruelty's exprest,
Or stage of follies is at the best.

Who can the music understand
From the soft touch of Nature's hand,
When man, her chiefest instrument,
So harshly jars without consent.

Do not her natural agents too
Fail in her operations, so
That he to whom they best appear,
Sees but the tombs of what they were?

Her chiefest actions then are such,
That no external sense may touch;
Shown doubtfully to the mind's sight
By the dark fancy's glimmering light.

The Night, indeed, which hideth all
Things else, discloseth the stars pale
And sickly faces; but our sense
Cannot perceive their influence.

They are the hidden books of Fate,
Where what with pains we calculate
And doubt, is only plainly known
To those assist their motion.

The close conveyances that move
With silent virtue from above
Incessantly on things below,
Our duller eyes can never know.

Nothing but colour, shape, and light,
Create their species in our sight:
All substances avoid the sense
Close couched under accidents.

In which, attir'd by Nature, we
Their loose apparel only see:
Spirits alone intuitive
Can to the heart of essence dive.

Why then should we desire to sleep,
Grovelling like swine in mire, so deep,
The mind for breath can find no way,
Chok'd up, and crowded into clay?

Stript of the flesh, in the clear spring
Of truth she bathes her soaring wing,
On whom do all ideas shine,
Reflected from the glass divine.



Home: PoetryExplorer.net