Nova

“ And that before a new blossom the old one is slain by a chilling blight;
Visions, all visions grow mute at the vision of souls new-bom,
And God in His temples trembles at new gods that rise to smite. ”

“ Another celestial body—added to the milliard and a half already moving gracefully round.
Every second a human soul is born into the world. A new flame is lit, a star which perhaps may come to shine with unusual beauty, which in any case has its own unseen spectrum. ”

“ The law of birth, growth, and decay, of endless change and perpetual renewal, is everywhere seen working throughout the cosmos, in nebula, in world and in sun, as in rock, in herb, and in man; all of which are but passing phases in the endless circulation of the universe, in that perpetual new birth which we call Nature. This, it will be said, is the poet's view of the external world, but it is at the same time the one which seems to me to be forced upon us as the highest generalization of modern science. ”

“ Illumine the darkness of my intellect with a ray of Thy heavenly light and inflame my heart with the fire of Thy divine love, that I may contemplate the great virtues and merits of the saint in whose honor I make this novena, and following his example imitate, like him, the life of Thy divine Son. ”

“ In the Domain of Nature, during early Spring, one sees the Spirit of New Life as an avatar, a coming of the Deity, or manifestation of the Mind in Nature, down to earth—to produce a resurrection of thought, being, joy, from an apparent death and past. ”

“ She did not stop to ask herself why the familiar events of every day appear so full of vivid interests—why the external objects at which she looked swam before her gaze in an atmosphere that was like a rainbow mist? It was sufficient to be alive to the finger tips, and to realise that everything in the great universe was alive around one—the air, the sky, the thistles along the roadside and the dust blowing before the wind, all moved, she felt, in harmony with the elemental pulse of life. ”

“ I’ll change to heaven the world and all
And there command the stars to meet.
I’ll make your subjects all men's hearts,
Revive the Eden with my verse,
Proclaim Thee high queen of it all
Throughout the whole of universe. ”

“ Just as the life activity of the early blossoms, and of the honey-hearted fruit of the mellow summer season, has its origin in the life-giving breath of the heavenly bridegroom, the glorious sun, so every terrestrial activity, every physical fact, with one of its terminals anchored in our consciousness, can trace its origin to the life-giving breath of some heavenly bridegroom, some burning star. ”

“ A wondrous change had passed upon the world—or was it not rather that a change more marvellous had taken place in us? Without light enough in the sky or the air to reveal anything, every heather-bush, every small shrub, every blade of grass was perfectly visible—either by light that went out from it, as fire from the bush Moses saw in the desert, or by light that went out of our eyes. Nothing cast a shadow; all things interchanged a little light. Every growing thing showed me, by its shape and colour, its indwelling idea—the informing thought, that is, which was its being, and sent it out. ”

“ Yet if the one expands before us with the magnificent extent, the diversified surface, the endless decorations of the earth itself, the other hangs on high, like a lone, clear star—small but intense—flashing upon us through the night of ages, invested with circumstances of divinity not less unquestionable than those which attend the venerable majesty of the Ancient of Song. ”

“ On her moon-pale face, uplifted to his, a lambent glow came and went.
“Such natures inherit the earth,” she murmured, “and what an earth! Kingdoms of light to which our plodding thought may never rise!” ”

“ Quieter than the clouds that flow
Across the stainless blue.
On this bare crest, the angels kneel
And breathe the sweets that rise
From flowers too little to reveal
Their beauty to our eyes.
I have seen Edens on the earth
With queenly blooms arrayed;
But here the fairest come to birth,
The smallest flowers He made.
O, high above the sounding pine,
And richer, sweeter far,
[135] The wild thyme wakes. The celandine
Looks at the morning star.
They may not see the heavens unfold.
They breathe no out-worn prayer ”

“ All changeable things are subject to the play of evolution, and are mortal, from the tiny flower in the field to the awe-inspiring cloud figure in the heavens which is called the nebula of Orion. But the laws which the stars and the planets obey in their paths through the heavens never change nor grow old ”

“ Still you hear our clamours, immortal Venus! Having loved your contemporaries, you belong to us, now, to all of us, to the universe. The twenty-five centuries of your life seem only to have consecrated your invincible youth. And the generations, those waves of the ocean of the ages, to you, victorious over time, come and come again, attracted and recalled irresistibly. Admiration is not spent as a marble wears away. ”

“ And with the modern expansion of the Idea of God, as with the modern expansion of the Idea of the Universe, the violet gulf of space ever seems more mystical,—its pure colour more and more divine, and appeals to us as the colour of the Unknowable,—the colour of the Holy of Holies. ”

“ The air is so clear that the eye seems to have new power of vision to reach to the uttermost end of the earth; the eye imparts to the soul its larger horizon, and a great leap of joy carries the spirit into the infinite room of creation, into the infinite grandeur of created things, and the spirit grows and feels its small estimate of God’s earth expanding into a newer, grander conception of creation. ”

“ The shadows of the tall churches grew longer and longer, until they touched the horizon and mingled in the universal shadow; and then, slow, and soft, and wrapping the world in fold after fold of deepening blue, came the night—the night at first obscurely simple, and then with faint points here and there, and then jewelled in darkling splendour with a hundred thousand lights. ”

“ In one old form of the creation story is told the first utterance of Nature, the cry of chaos, "Let love be!" Through what inspiration of wisdom it comes to us out of the silence we do not know, but feel that the earlier tale of a divine mandate, "Light be!" ”

“ These fastidious scorners of every day and its interests are always looking through nature for "the herbs before they were in the field and every flower before it grew," and through women for the Eve who was in the imagination of the Lord before she was embodied, and we all need this refining vision more than we know. It may be asked of us hereafter when we would mount up into the towers of vision, "How can you desire the beauty you have not seen, who have not sought or loved its shadow in the world?" ”

“ Shouldst thou, however, turn thy gaze unto a Mirror, brilliant, stainless, and pure, wherein the divine Beauty is reflected, therein wilt thou find the Sun shining with Its rays, Its heat, Its disc, Its fair form all entire. For each separate entity possesseth its allotted portion of the solar light and telleth of the Sun, but that Universal Reality in all Its splendour, that stainless Mirror Whose qualities are appropriate to the qualities of the Sun revealed within It—expresseth in their entirety the attributes of the Source of Glory. ”

“ I look upon a realm celestial in its beauty, unprofaned by earthly sign or sound. A strange, supernal stillness fills the air; and save where some unseen spirit-wing tips the slender twig and lets fall the scintillating shower, no slightest movement mars the enchanted vision. ”

“ When rising from my knees I exclaimed, 'Old things have passed away, all things have become new.' It was like entering another world, a new state of existence. Natural objects were glorified, my spiritual vision was so clarified that I saw beauty in every material object in the universe, the woods were vocal with heavenly music ”

“ As each new marvel came in sight, unstaled by familiar and untarnished by vulgar associations, fresh from the hand of nature, so to speak, we were filled as we had never been before with an intoxicating sense of the divine mystery and miracle of life. ”

“ Unseen before, a strange new visitant
To heavens unchangeable, as the world believed,
Since the creation.
Could new stars be born?
Night after night he watched that miracle
Growing and changing colour as it grew ”

“ The beam of the dawn is risen, and there shall again be times and seasons, and the Being of the majesty of God is made manifest in form. From the dust of the earth is the earth made again, and of the beams of His glory shall He make new stars. ”

“ Then, beginning with the translations of Eastern tales in Queen Anne’s reign and taking definite form toward the middle of the century, comes the revival of romantic feeling—the era of new joy in Nature, and in the radiance of past times, strange scenes, bold deeds, and incredible marvels. We feel it first in the poets, whose utterances take on new qualities of wonder, strangeness, and shuddering. ”

“ Every one knows the changed aspect of the whole material world, when one of the lights that radiated the inner self has merged into shadow, leaving us to grope our way in darkness, until the radiance of a new light, emerging from ourselves, shall penetrate the shadow and shine with the combined brightness of both. ”

“ The goddess shone through her indeed, glowed in all her body, she was a worshipful temple of love for me--yes. But I could feel, like a thing new discovered, the texture and sinews of her living, her dear personal and mortal hands. ”

“ In the heavens, the Sun and Moon are, by interpreters of dreams, put for the persons of Kings and Queens; but in sacred Prophecy, which regards not single persons, the Sun is put for the whole species and race of Kings, in the kingdom or kingdoms of the world politic, shining with regal power and glory; the Moon for the body of the common people, considered as the King's wife; the Stars for subordinate Princes and great men, or for Bishops and Rulers of the people of God, when the Sun is Christ; light for the glory, truth, and knowledge, wherewith great and good men shine and illuminate others ”

“ Faith declareth: “Beauty seen,
Like a cloud, is but a thought,
Or a breath, that, having been,
Is naught.
“Have thy vision. Build it proud.
Let thy soul be full thereof.
Love a woman — love a cloud —
But love!” ”

“ A new world is here revealed to your gaze—a world in which the whole miracle of the earth's multiple aspects is epitomised, where the eternal play of light and shade constitutes an ever-changing picture that creates a world-drama in inanimate Nature. ”

“ The whole world would somehow be miraculously transformed—but it wasn't. This tree was here when men first reached the Moon, and Mars, and Venus and the rest, but it didn't know about that, it didn't change because of it. ”

“ Normally we close our eyes on a cloudy gloom through which vague forms struggle sometimes into definiteness. But the luminous quality gradually became normal in me, and at times in meditation there broke in on me an almost intolerable lustre of light, pure and shining faces, dazzling processions of figures, most ancient, ancient places and peoples, and landscapes lovely as the lost Eden. ”

“ But when the sun has reached the zenith, followed by the sea as is a shepherd, and by the races of mankind arising in successive multitudes,—it is noon, and everything that occupies a dimension in space is enveloped by the soul of a fire whiter than lightning. ”

“ Moreover, just as the disc of the Sun, or the star-like form which the ancients often used to signify the radiate or impregnating Sun, naturally came to be recognised as the symbol of the Male Principle, so the Crescent, as signifying the increasing Moon and the lesser of the two great lights of heaven, in like manner came to be adopted as the natural symbol of the Female Principle. ”

“ But the external sense of the Word is like the white light when it falls upon a cloud descending in drops of rain, where it is divided or broken into the many colours of the glorious arch that spans the heavens—the beautiful rainbow. The natural sense of the divine Word is indeed the pure light of the internal sense broken into its many colours, when it falls upon the cloud of the letter ”

“ How Earth hath said its secret,—to
The violet’s appealing blue,—
Of fragrance; old as Earth is old,
The knowledge that is never told?
Shall I behold and yet forget,
The soft blue of the heaven fell,
Between the dusk and dawn, to tell
Its purpose, to the violet,
Of beauty none hath fathomed yet?
Between the Earth and Heav’n, above,
The wind goes singing all day long;
And he who listens to its song
May catch an instant’s meaning of
The end of life, the end of love.
II
The gods of Greece are mine once more! ”

“ He looked up to the Heavens, and saw star beyond star, till the deep blue sky seemed, to his intense gaze, to grow white with the multitude of brilliant orbs that shone forth from the very bottom of the depth. ”

“ To him nature is truly the “Goddess,” the great Diana of the Ephesians, the everlasting Beauty, the artist of genius, ceaselessly inventing and creating, in floods of Life, in Action's storm—an infinite ocean, a restless weaving, a glowing Life. ”

“ Before they had gone far on their homeward ride, all things passed through magical changes. The hills were seen in vapory visions, shifting their hues with opaline glances; and over the green, billowy surface of the broad Campagna was settling a prismatic robe of mist, changing from rose to violet. Earth seemed to be writing, in colored notes, with tenderest modulations, her farewell hymn to the departing God of Light. ”

“ Thou wert made to receive the apple like Venus, or to eat it like Eve; beauty begins with thee. I have just referred to Eve; it is thou who hast created her. Thou deservest the letters-patent of the beautiful woman. ”

“ At the same time his attention is fixed by a new wonder, the much-talked-of rainbow. Never varying, never changing, that perfect-shaped arc is surely more typical of eternity there than anywhere else. ”