The Joy of a Pure Life
Happy are the pure in heart, for it is they who will see God.
—Jesus.
The Key to a New Earth and Heaven
O lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live;
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud!
And would we ought behold of higher worth
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless, ever-anxious crowd—
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the earth;
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element!
O pure of heart! thou need’st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be,
What and wherein it doth exist.
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power:
Joy, virtuous lady! Joy that ne’er was given
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,
Life, and life’s effluence, cloud at once and shower—
Joy, lady, is the spirit and power
Which wedding nature to us, gives in dower
A new Earth and Heaven,
Undreamt-of by the sensual and the proud;
Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud—
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colors a suffusion from that light.
—S. T. Colbridge.
Alternate Reading: Acts 8:14-25.