Nocturne

Night of Mid-June, in heavy vapours dying,     Like priestly hands thy holy touch is lying     Upon the world's wide brow;     God-like and grand all nature is commanding     The "peace that passes human understanding";     I, also, feel it now.     What matters it to-night, if one life treasure     I covet, is not mine! Am I to measure     The gifts of Heaven's decree     By my desires? O! life for ever longing     For some far gift, where many gifts are thronging,     God wills, it may not be.     Am I to learn that longing, lifted higher,     Perhaps will catch the gleam of sacred fire     That shows my cross is gold?     That underneath this cross - however lowly,     A jewel rests, white, beautiful and holy,     Whose worth can not be told.     Like to a scene I watched one day in wonder: -     A city, great and powerful, lay under     A sky of grey and gold;     The sun outbreaking in his farewell hour,     Was scattering afar a yellow shower     Of light, that aureoled     With brief hot touch, so marvellous and shining,     A hundred steeples on the sky out-lining,     Like network threads of fire;     Above them all, with halo far outspreading,     I saw a golden cross in glory heading     A consecrated spire:     I only saw its gleaming form uplifting,     Against the clouds of grey to seaward drifting,     And yet I surely know     Beneath the seen, a great unseen is resting,     For while the cross that pinnacle is cresting,     An Altar lies below.     Night of Mid-June, so slumberous and tender,     Night of Mid-June, transcendent in thy splendour     Thy silent wings enfold     And hush my longing, as at thy desire     All colour fades from round that far-off spire,     Except its cross of gold.