Tabernacles

The little tents the wildflowers raise     Are tabernacles where Love prays     And Beauty preaches all the days.     I walk the woodland through and through,     And everywhere I see their blue     And gold where I may worship too.     All hearts unto their inmost shrine     Of fragrance they invite; and mine     Enters and sees the All Divine.     I hark; and with some inward ear     Soft words of praise and prayer I hear,     And bow my head and have no fear.     For God is present as I see     In them; and gazes out at me     Kneeling to His divinity.     Oh, holiness that Nature knows,     That dwells within each thing that grows,     Vestured with dreams as is the rose.     With perfume! whereof all things preach     The birds, the brooks, the leaves, that reach     Our hearts and souls with loving speech;     That makes a tabernacle of     The flowers; whose priests are Truth and Love,     Who help our souls to rise above.     The Earth and that which we name sin     Unto the knowledge that is kin     To Heaven, to which at last we win.