A hymn, an incense rising toward the skies,
As our whole like should rise;
An offering without stint from earth below,
Which Love accepteth so.

-- Christina Rossetti
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)

All voices of all things inanimate
Join with the song of Angels and the song
Of blessed Spirits, chiming with
Their Hallelujahs.  One wind wakeneth
Across the sleeping sea, crisping along
The waves, the brushes thro' the great
Forests and tangled hedges, and calls out
Of rivers a clear sound,
And makes the ripe corn rustle on the ground,
And murmurs in a shell;
Till all their voices swell
Above the clouds in one loud hymn
Joining the song of Seraphim,
Or like pure incense circle round about
The walls of Heaven, or like a well-spring rise
In shady Paradise.

-- Christina Rossetti
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)

O we can wait no longer,
We too take ship O soul
Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,
Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,
Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,)
Caroling free, singing our song of God,
Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.

-- Walt Whitman
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)

In holy music's golden speech
   Remotest notes to notes respond:
Each octave is a world; yet each
   Vibrates to worlds its own beyond.

-- Aubrey de Vere
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)

Thy light alone -- like mist o'er mountains driven,
   Or music by the night-wind sent
   Through strings of some still instrument,
   Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelly
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)