Jones Very: Verses about Soul

My brother, I am hungry,—give me food
Such as my Father gives me at his board;
He has for many years been to thee good,
Thou canst a morsel then to me afford;
I do not ask of thee a grain of that
Thou offerest when I call on thee for bread;
This is not of the wine nor olive fat,
But those who eat of this like thee are dead;
I ask the love the Father has for thee,
That thou should'st give it back to me again;
This shall my soul from pangs of hunger free,
And on my parched spirit fall like rain;
Then thou wilt prove a brother to my need,
For in the cross of Christ thou too canst bleed.

Father! thy wonders do not singly stand,
Nor far removed where feet have seldom strayed;
Around us ever lies the enchanted land
In marvels rich to thine own sons displayed;
In finding thee are all things round us found;
In losing thee are all things lost beside;
Ears have we but in vain strange voices sound,
And to our eyes the vision is denied;
We wander in the country far remote,
Mid tombs and ruined piles in death to dwell;
Or on the records of past greatness dote,
And for a buried soul the living sell;
While on our path bewildered falls the night
That ne'er returns us to the fields of light.

How many of the body's health complain,
When they some deeper malady conceal;
Some unrest of the soul, some secret pain,
Which thus its presence doth to them reveal.
Vain would we seek, by the physician's aid,
A name for this soul-sickness e'er to find;
A remedy for health and strength decayed,
Whose cause and cure are wholly of the mind
To higher nature is the soul allied,
And restless seeks its being's Source to know;
Finding not health nor strength in aught beside;
How often vainly sought in things below,
Whether in sunny clime, or sacred stream,
Or plant of wondrous powers of which we dream!

I would not breathe, when blows thy mighty wind
O'er desolate hill and winter-blasted plain,
But stand in waiting hope if I may find
Each flower recalled to newer life again
That now unsightly hides itself from Thee,
Amid the leaves or rustling grasses dry,
With ice-cased rock and snowy-mantled tree
Ashamed lest Thou its nakedness should spy;
But Thou shall breathe and every rattling bough
Shall gather leaves; each rock with rivers flow;
And they that hide them from thy presence now
In new found robes along thy path shall glow,
And meadows at thy coming fall and rise,
Their green waves sprinkled with a thousand eyes.

Beneath these shades, beside yon winding stream,
Lies Hawthorne's manly form, the mortal part!
The soul, that loved to meditate and dream,
Might linger here unwilling to depart,
But that a higher life has called away
To fairer scenes, to nobler work and thought.
Why should the spirit then on earth delay,
That has a glimpse of such bright regions caught!
And near another, Nature's child, doth rest,—
Thoreau, who loved each woodland path to tread;
So gently sleeping on his mother's breast!
Living, though numbered with the numerous dead.
We mourn! But hope will whisper in the heart,
We meet again and meet no more to part.

I SAW a worm, with many a fold;
It spun itself a sliken tomb;
And there in winter time enrolled,
It heeded not the cold or gloom.

Within a small, snug nook it lay,
Nor snow nor sleet could reach it there,
Nor wind was felt in gusty day,
Nor biting cold of frosty air.

Spring comes with bursting buds and grass,
Around him stirs a warmer breeze;
The chirping insects by him pass,
His hiding place not yet he leaves.

But summer came; its fervid breath
Was felt within the sleeper's cell;
And, waking from his sleep of death,
I saw him crawl from out his shell

Slow and with pain he first moved on,
And of the day he seemed to be;
A day passed by; the worm was gone,
It soared on golden pinions free!