| TRIUMPHAL arch, that fill’st the sky | |
| When storms prepare to part, | |
| I ask not proud philosophy | |
| To teach me what thou art. | |
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| Still seem as to my childhood’s sight, | |
| A midway station given, | |
| For happy spirits to alight | |
| Betwixt the earth and heaven. | |
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| Can all that optics teach unfold | |
| Thy form to please me so, | |
| As when I dreamed of gems and gold | |
| Hid in thy radiant bow? | |
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| And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams, | |
| But words of the Most High, | |
| Have told why first thy robe of beams | |
| Was woven in the sky. | |
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| When o’er the green, undeluged earth | |
| Heaven’s covenant thou didst shine, | |
| How came the world’s gray fathers forth | |
| To watch thy sacred sign! | |
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| And when its yellow lustre smiled | |
| O’er mountains yet untrod, | |
| Each mother held aloft her child | |
| To bless the bow of God. | |
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| Methinks, thy jubilee to keep, | |
| The first-made anthem rang | |
| On earth, delivered from the deep, | |
| And the first poet sang. | |
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| The earth to thee her incense yields, | |
| The lark thy welcome sings, | |
| When, glittering in the freshened fields, | |
| The snowy mushroom springs. | |
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| How glorious is thy girdle cast | |
| O’er mountain, tower, and town, | |
| Or mirrored in the ocean vast, | |
| A thousand fathoms down! | |
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| As fresh in yon horizon dark, | |
| As young thy beauties seem, | |
| As when the eagle from the ark | |
| First sported in thy beam. | |
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| For, faithful to its sacred page, | |
| Heaven still rebuilds thy span; | |
| Nor lets the type grow pale with age, | |
| That first spoke peace to man. |
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