AN ASPIRATION.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 6, 1 May 1880, Page 4

AN ASPIRATION.

€toi>! what a pitiful mockery Seems this poor human speech, To paint the marvellous majesty Which my life designs to teach. Ood ! how much less than very death Is this outspoken tongue, 3\> grasp the glorious hymn of faith Which my soul and I have sung. Oh, but for living lips of fire To utter out my heart, And flash the tones from my spirit lyre In the voice with which they start ! Oh, but for language that should scorch The innermost heart of hell, And gleam and glare like a flaming torch Through the deeps where devils dwell. Oh for an utterance that should sweep Like the red-hot-lipped simoom, And wither the damning things that keep This beautiful world in gloom ! Oh for a voice whose tone should fall Like the touch of a mother's prayer On the sick and sorrowing souls of all Who pine for a holier air I Oh, if my passionate scorn of wrong, My prodigal love of right, And the beautiful hopes that thrill and throng My soul like the stars of night — Oh, if but these could pass my lips In the night with which they rise, How I'd tear and trample the black , «clipse That shroudeth my brothers' eyes ! O Christ ! for a boundless pentesost To rest t>n my heaving soul, And give it speech of the Holy Ghost Instead of this stammering dole. Then, Jesu ! the lofty hymn sublime I'd fling on life's panting sea Should ring on the farthest shore of time, And grapple eternity. Richard Realf.