Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CIVITAS DEI, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CIVITAS DEI, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Oh splendours unattainable!
Last Line: At last the height is won.
Subject(s): Heaven; Paradise


OH splendours unattainable!
Oh heights unclimbed of thought!
Oh hidden secrets of the skies,
By lifted hands and straining eyes,
Through dim, unnumbered centuries
Unprofitably sought.
Yet must our hopeless vision scan
The immeasurable plan.

The earth with Spring's first flowers grows glad,
The skies, the seas are blue,
But still shall finer spirits turn
With hearts that long, and souls that burn,
And for some ghostly whiteness yearn,
Some glimpses of the True;
Chasing some fair ideal sweet,
Breathless with bleeding feet.

High Summer comes with warmth and light.
The populous cities teem;
Through statue-decked perspectives, long,
Aglow with painting, lit with song,
Surges the busy, world-worn throng.
But, ah! not these their dream,
Not these, like that white ghost allure,
August, celestial, pure.

Crowning the cloud-based ramparts, shines
The City of their love;
Now soft with fair reflected light,
And now intolerably bright,
Dazzling the feeble, struggling sight,
It beckons from above.
it gleams above the untrodden snows,
Flushed by the Dawn's weird rose.

It gleams, it grows, it sinks, it fades,
While up the perilous height,
From the safe, cloistered walls of home,
Low cot, or aery palace dome
The faithful pilgrims boldly come.
Though Heaven be veiled in night,
They come, they climb, they dare not stay,
Whose feet forerun the Day.

And some through midnight darkness fall
Missing the illumined sky;
And some with cleansed heart and mind,
And soul to lower splendours blind,
The city of their longing find,
Clear to the mortal eye.
By all, or here, or leagues beyond the Sun,
At last the Height is won.





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