Tabernacles
By Madison Julius Cawein
The little tents the wildflowers raise
Are tabernacles where Love prays
And Beauty preaches all the days.
I walk the woodland through and through,
And everywhere I see their blue
And gold where I may worship too.
All hearts unto their inmost shrine
Of fragrance they invite; and mine
Enters and sees the All Divine.
I hark; and with some inward ear
Soft words of praise and prayer I hear,
And bow my head and have no fear.
For God is present as I see
In them; and gazes out at me
Kneeling to His divinity.
Oh, holiness that Nature knows,
That dwells within each thing that grows,
Vestured with dreams as is the rose.
With perfume! whereof all things preach
The birds, the brooks, the leaves, that reach
Our hearts and souls with loving speech;
That makes a tabernacle of
The flowers; whose priests are Truth and Love,
Who help our souls to rise above.
The Earth and that which we name sin
Unto the knowledge that is kin
To Heaven, to which at last we win.