AURAS OF DELIGHT
Reading edition
And Him I thank, who can make live again
The dust, but not the joy we once profane,
That I, of ye,
Beautiful habitations, auras of delight,
In childish years and since had sometime sense and sight,
But that ye vanish’d quite,
Even from memory,
Ere I could get my breath, and whisper ‘See!’
But did for me
They altogether die,
Those trackless glories glimps’d in upper sky?
Were they of chance, or vain,
Nor good at all again
For curb of heart or fret?
Nay, though, by grace,
Lest, haply, I refuse God to his face,
Their likeness wholly I forget,
Ah, yet,
87Often in straits which else for me were ill,
I mind me still
I did respire the lonely auras sweet,
I did the blest abodes behold, and, at the mountains’ feet,
Bathed in the holy Stream by Hermon’s thymy hill.
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