Peace there:--and peace upon the house of God,
The little road-side church that room-like stands
Crouching entrench'd in slopes of daisy sod,
And duly deck'd by Herbert-honouring hands:--
Cell of detachment! Shrine to which the heart
Withdraws, and all the roar of life is still;
Then sinks into herself, and finds a shrine
Within the shrine apart:
Alone with God, as on the Arabian hill
Man knelt in vision to the All-divine!

--Thrice happy they,--and know their happiness,--
Who read the soul's star-orbit Heaven-ward clear;
Not roving comet-like through doubt and guess,
But 'neath their feet tread nescient pride and fear;
Scan the unseen with sober certainty,
God's hill above Himalah;--Love green earth
With deeper, truer love, because the blue
Of Heaven around they see;--
Who in the death-gasp hail man's second birth,
And yield their loved ones with a brief adieu!

--Thee, too, esteem I happy in thy death,
Poet! while yet peace was, and thou might'st live
Unvex'd in thy sweet reasonable faith,
The gracious creed that knows how to forgive:--
Not narrowing God to self,--the common bane
Of sects, each man his own small oracle;
Not losing innerness in external rite;
A worship pure and plain,