Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, O FAIR!-O PUREST!; SAINT AUGUSTINE TO HIS SISTER, by THOMAS MOORE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

O FAIR!-O PUREST!; SAINT AUGUSTINE TO HIS SISTER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: O fair! O purest! Be thou the dove
Last Line: O fair! O purest! Be like the dove.
Alternate Author Name(s): Little, Thomas
Subject(s): Augustine, Saint (354-430); Religion; Saints; Solitude; Augustine Of Hippo; Theology; Loneliness


I.

O FAIR! O purest! be thou the dove,
That flies alone to some sunny grove;
And lives unseen, and bathes her wing,
All vestal white, in the limpid spring.
There, if the hovering hawk be near,
That limpid spring in its mirror clear
Reflects him, ere he can reach his prey,
And warns the timorous bird away.
Oh! be like this dove;
O fair! O purest! be like this dove.

II.

The sacred pages of God's own Book
Shall be the spring, the eternal brook,
In whose holy mirror, night and day,
Thou wilt study heaven's reflected ray: --
And should the foes of virtue dare,
With gloomy wing to seek thee there,
Thou wilt see how dark their shadows lie
Between heaven and thee, and trembling fly!
Oh! be like the dove;
O fair! O purest! be like the dove.





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