Apollo

Apollo  (1853)  by Thomas Holley Chivers

What are stars, but hieroglyphics of God's glory write in lightning

On the wide-unfolded pages of the azure scroll above?

But the quenchless apotheoses of thoughts forever brightening

In the mighty Mind immortal of the God whose name is Love?

Diamond letters sculptured, rising, on the azure ether pages,

That now sing to one another--unto one another shine--

God's eternal scripture talking, through the midnight, to the Ages,

Of the life that is immortal, but the life that is divine.

Like some deep impetuous river from the fountains everlasting,

Down the serpentine soft valleys of the vistas of all Time,

Over cataracts of adamant uplifted unto mountains,

Soared his soul to God in thunder on the wings of thought sublime.

With the rising golden glory of the sun in ministrations,

Making oceans metropolitan of splendor for the dawn--

Piling pyramid on pyramid of music for the nations--

Sings the Angel who sits shining everlasting in the sun,

For the stars, which are the echoes of the shining of the sun.

Like the lightning piled on lightnings, ever rising, never reaching,

In one monument of glory towards the golden gates of God--

Voicing out themselves in thunder upon thunder in their preaching,

Piled this Cyclop up his Epic where the Angels never trod.

Like the fountains everlasting that forever more are flowing

From the throne within the centre of the City built on high,

With their genial irrigation life forever more bestowing--

Flows his lucid, liquid river through the gardens of the sky,

For the stars forever blooming in the gardens of the sky.