Sky Pictures

One sweep of blue
        Framing many a picture rare;
Fantastic clouds of varied hue,
        Devices quaint and queer.
Pillared columns,
        Antique works of art and skill,
Piles of continents infused
        With deep and hill.

Bastions fringed with fire,
        Hooded heads of agèd men
Roll serenely onward, higher,
        And lose their shape again.
Purple minarets,
        Relieved in coloured gold,
Cloaks of sombre, sober grey
        In sparkling borders rolled.

Ruined towers
        Lift their battered arches wide,
As if to free the passage for
        A rich, prismatic tide.
Slender spires cleave,
        And twinkling flash and gleam.
Who may deny the thought,
        This is a waking dream?

A dream indeed!
        Where light is weaved in skeins,
Then twined in thick and braided cords,
        And then in widest veins;
Where change is king,
        And works its own infinite will,
To bless the charmed eyes that gaze
        With pictures, pictured sweeter still.

Who lifts his sight,
        And looks no farther than the sky,
Discerning not the Deity,
        Deserves our fervent pity.
One sweep of blue,
        Fashioned to a million ends,
Must be the great provision
        Of the master-mind it blends.