His creed is--Love--Love perfect, uncontrolled;
Twining round all the good and beautiful,
As ivy twineth round the sapling oak,
Evermore growing with its growth more strong,
Till not e'en Death can tear those arms away;
Love--winging o'er creation like the morn
And show'ring light and beauty as it flies
O'er mountain, vale, and streamlet, equally--
In flowery mead and desert solitude
Making itself a presence of delight,
A radiant glory sweeter than all forms,
All shows, all substance--rising in the soul,
Like water in the desert--heaven in death!
Opening the unseen gates of Heaven, till sense
Dream of its utter blessedness and peace;
Leading life onward like an angel pure,
Through strife and sorrow scatheless and secure,
Scattering joy around it evermore,
Like benisons shed from a mother's heart,
Making the weary and the bruized glad,
Wiping the tears from sorrow's clouded eyes,
And soothing pain like woman's tenderness.

Let me love all things with a perfect love,
That would e'en coin its own heart-drops to pay
Life's ransom from the bitterness of woe,
Bear tenderly upon the weaknesses
Of flesh, and its oft seen infirmities,
And turn with hope and trustfulness to man;
Let me not be a stunted thorn on earth,
With jagged points to scare all fondness off,
Unsweeten'd by a blossom or a bud,
And branded deep with harsh sterility,
But like a soft wind breathing to and fro,
May love and sympathy wave through the Earth.
Life without love, is sorrow without hope.

O Love! thou law of Heaven! thou joy of Earth!
That like the Star of Bethlehem dost rest
Above the cradle of a Poet's soul,
The witness and the seal of holy birth;
Before whose brightness all earth's shadows fade
Like fiends before the angel of the Lord;
That rend'st in twain the veil of doubt and fear
Shrouding the perfectness of heaven's pure bliss,
Till man may worship with unsmitten soul
Before the glory of the inner shrine;
O Love! the Quenchless! Pure! and Beautiful!
Be to me as the Prophet's cruize of oil,
That wasteth not, nor minisheth with use,
To nourish me through this life's famine time,
And strengthen me unto the poet's work;
Fold my soul throughly in thy sweet embrace,
In honour, or in sorrow, or in joy,
Filling it with thy holy influence,
As air is filled with sunshine at the noon,
Till all thought feel its blessedness and peac