Five Prayers

TO taste
Wild wine of the mountain-spring, fresh, living, strong,
Running and rushing like a triumph-song
Round hearts new-braced:

To smell
A growing cowslip, some glad morn of Spring,
And breathe the breath of every fragrant thing
From every bell:

To touch
A sliding wavelet, supple, smooth and thin,—
Just ere the pois’d and perfect crests begin
To bend too much:

To hear
Amid May twilight, by the murmuring sea,
Some blackbird warbling from a budded tree,
Tender and clear:

To see
Down young rose-petals how the deepening light
Glides gradually, till, somewhere out of sight,
What light must be!—

O Thou, intense
Rapture of Beauty! All-pervading Lord!
Is not this worship? So art Thou ador’d
By every sense