The testament of beauty : a poem in four books / by Robert Bridges.

  • Robert Bridges
Date:
[1930]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The testament of beauty : a poem in four books / by Robert Bridges. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that tlio’ she guide his highest flight heav’nward, and teach him dignity morals manners and human comfort, she can delicatly and dangerously bedizen 60 the rioting joys that fringe the sad pathways of Hell. Nor without alliance of the animal senses hath she any miracle: Lov’st thou in the blithe hour of April dawns—nay marvelest thou not—to hear the ravishing music that the small birdes make in garden or woodland, rapturously heralding the break of day; when the first lark on high hath warn’d the vigilant robin already of the sun’s approach, and he on slender pipe calleth the nesting tribes to awake and fill and thrill their myriad-warbling throats 7° praising life’s God, untill the blisful revel grow in wild profusion unfeign’d to such a hymn as man hath never in temple or grove pour’d to the Lord of heav’n ? Hast thou then thought that all this ravishing music, that stirreth so thy heart, making thee dream of things illimitable unsearchable and of heavenly import, is but a light disturbance of the atoms of air, whose jostling ripples, gather’d within the ear, are tuned to resonant scale, and thence by the enthron’d mind received on the spiral stairway of her audience chamber 8c as heralds of high spiritual significance ?
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