“Yes” [poem by Charles Harpur]

[Editor: This poem by Charles Harpur was published in The Bushrangers; A Play in Five Acts, and Other Poems (1853).]

“Yes.”

My soul is raying like a star,
My heart is happier than a bird,
And all to hear through fortune’s jar
One promissory word.

A sound as simple as the low
Quick sliding gurgle of a rill,
And yet with power to overflow
A world with blissful will!

I feel as though the very air
Was breathen from the heart of Love,
As Pleasure in the sun’s bright lair
Sat brooding like a dove!

A billow of the sunny sea,
A cloudlet of the summer sky,
How wide is their felicity —
So widely blest am I!

O Beauty, through one little word
What boundless power is thine to bless!
O Love, a seraph’s voice is heard
In thy confiding “Yes!”

Source:
Charles Harpur, The Bushrangers; A Play in Five Acts, and Other Poems, Sydney: W. R. Piddington, 1853, pages 103-104

Editor’s notes:
rill = a very small brook, creek, or stream (a rivulet)

seraph = an angel (one of the Seraphim), regarded as a highly-ranked order of angel (the Seraphim are mentioned in the Bible, in Isaiah 6: “I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne . . . Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings”)

Old spelling in the original text:
blest (blessed)
thine (yours)
thy (your)