Night of Mid-June, in heavy vapours dying, <br />Like priestly hands thy holy touch is lying <br />Upon the world's wide brow; <br />God-like and grand all nature is commanding <br />The "peace that passes human understanding"; <br />I, also, feel it now. <br /> <br />What matters it to-night, if one life treasure <br />I covet, is not mine! Am I to measure <br />The gifts of Heaven's decree <br />By my desires? O! life for ever longing <br />For some far gift, where many gifts are thronging, <br />God wills, it may not be. <br /> <br />Am I to learn that longing, lifted higher, <br />Perhaps will catch the gleam of sacred fire <br />That shows my cross is gold? <br />That underneath this cross--however lowly, <br />A jewel rests, white, beautiful and holy, <br />Whose worth can not be told. <br /> <br />Like to a scene I watched one day in wonder:-- <br />A city, great and powerful, lay under <br />A sky of grey and gold; <br />The sun outbreaking in his farewell hour, <br />Was scattering afar a yellow shower <br />Of light, that aureoled <br /> <br />With brief hot touch, so marvellous and shining, <br />A hundred steeples on the sky out-lining, <br />Like network threads of fire; <br />Above them all, with halo far outspreading, <br />I saw a golden cross in glory heading <br />A consecrated spire: <br /> <br />I only saw its gleaming form uplifting, <br />Against the clouds of grey to seaward drifting, <br />And yet I surely know <br />Beneath the seen, a great unseen is resting, <br />For while the cross that pinnacle is cresting, <br />An Altar lies below. <br /> <br /> . . . . . <br /> <br />Night of Mid-June, so slumberous and tender, <br />Night of Mid-June, transcendent in thy splendour <br />Thy silent wings enfold <br />And hush my longing, as at thy desire <br />All colour fades from round that far-off spire, <br />Except its cross of gold.<br /><br />Emily Pauline Johnson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/nocturne-6/
