THE POET OF POETS.

Southland Times, Issue 1015, 4 September 1868, Page 3

THE POET OF POETS.

By the Attthob op " Chbohtoles op the SCHOIBEItG-COTTA FAMILY." We know there was One on earth. "Who penetrated all He saw, To whom the lily had its worth, And Nature bared her inmost law. And when the mountain-side He trod, The universe before Him shone, Translucent in the smile of Gl-od, Like young leaves in the morning sun, Glory which Greece had never won, To consecrate her Parthenon. Had He but uttered forth in song The visions of His waking sight, , The thoughts that o'er His soul would throng Alone upon the hills at night; What poet's loftiest ectasies Had stirred men with such rapturous awe As would those living words of His, Calm utterance of what He saw! All earth had on those accents hung,. All ages with their echoes rung. But he came not alone to speak — He came to live, He came to die: living, a long lost race to seek ; Dying, to raise the fallen high He came, Himself the living Word, The Godhead in His person shone ; But few and poor were those who heard, And wrote His words when He was gone Words children to their hearts can clasp, Yet angles cannot wholly grasp. But where those simple words were flung, Like raindrops on the parched green, A living race of poets sprung, • Who dwelt among the things unseen ; Who loved the fallen, Bought the lost, Yet saw beneath time's masks and shrouds; Whose life was one pure holocaust, Death but a breaking in the clouds : His "Volume as the world was broad, His Poem was the Church of God.