Explore "Dulciora (of Skies and Seasons)" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A tear that trembles for a little while / Upon the trembling eyelid, till the world / Wavers within its circle like a dream, / Holds more of meaning in its narrow orb / Than all the distant landscape that it blurs.
A smile that hovers round a mouth beloved, / Like the faint pulsing of the Northern Light, / And grows in silence to an amber dawn / Born in the sweetest depths of trustful eyes, / Is dearer to the soul than sun or star.
A joy that falls into the hollow heart / From some far-lifted height of love unseen, / Unknown, makes a more perfect melody / Than hidden brooks that murmur in the dusk, / Or fall athwart the cliff with wavering gleam.
Ah, not for their own sake are earth and sky / And the fair ministries of Nature dear, / But as they set themselves unto the tune / That fills our life; as light mysterious / Flows from within and glorifies the world.
For so a common wayside blossom, touched / With tender thought, assumes a grace more sweet / Than crowns the royal lily of the South; / And so a well-remembered perfume seems / The breath of one who breathes in Paradise.
1872.