Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882) : "Giotto's Tower"

How many lives, made beautiful and sweet 

    By self-devotion and by self-restraint,

    Whose pleasure is to run without complaint

    On unknown errands of the Paraclete,

Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet,

    Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint

   Around the shining forehead of the saint,

   And are in their completeness incomplete!

In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's tower,

   The lily of Florence blossoming in stone, -

   A vision, a delight, and a desire, -

The builder's perfect and centennial flower,

    That in the night of ages bloomed alone,

    But wanting still the glory of the spire.

From "Flower - De - Luce"

Ticknor and Fields,  1867

Flower De Luce

Love

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Zi Ye (6th - 3rd c. B.C.E.)

All night I could  not sleep

because of the moonlight on my  bed.

I kept on hearing a voice calling:

Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered "yes".

From "Women in Praise of the Sacred"

Edited by Jane Hirshfield

Harper Perennial (Harper Collins Publishers) 1995

Women in Praise of the Sacred

Translation by Arthur Waley

Thomas Traherne ( 1636 - 1674 ) : From "Christian Ethicks"

For man to act as if his soul did see

The very brightness of eternity;

For man to act as if his love did burn

Above the spheres, even while it's in its urn;

For man to act even in the wilderness

As if he did those sovereign joys possess

Which do at once confirm, stir up, inflame

And perfect angels - having not the same!

It doth increase the value of his deeds;

In this a man a Seraphim exceeds.

. . .

From "Flowers of Heaven" - One Thousand Years of Christian Verse

Compiled by Joseph Pearce

Ignatius Press, 1999

Flowers of Heaven