Delivered on the first anniversary of the Carolina Art Association, Feb. 10, 1856.
THERE are two worlds wherein our souls may dwell,
With discord, or ethereal music fraught,
One the loud mart wherein men buy and sell
(Too oft the haunt of grovelling moods of Hell),
The other, that immaculate realm of thought,
In whose bright calm the master-workmen wrought,
Where genius lives on light,
And faith is lost in sight,
Where crystal tides of perfect harmony swell
Up to the heavens that never held cloud,
And round great altars reverent hosts are bowed,
Altars upreared to love that cannot die,
To beauty that forever keeps its youth,
To kingly grandeur, and to virginal truth,
To all things wise and pure,
Whereof our God hath said, “Endure! endure!
Ye are but parts of me,
The hath been, and the evermore to be,
Of my supremest Immortality!”
We falter in the darkness and the dearth
Which sordid passions and untamed desires
Create about us; universal earth
Groans with the burden of our sensual woes;
The heart heaven gave for homage is consumed
By the wild rages of unhallowed fires
The blush of that fine glory which illumed
The earlier ages, hath gone out in gloom;
There is no joy within us, no repose
One creed our beacon, and one god our hold,
The creed, the god, of gold;
The heavenward wing
(Paul Hamilton Hayne)
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