| WE sow the glebe, we reap the corn, | |
| We build the house where we may rest, | |
| And then, at moments, suddenly, | |
| We look up to the great wide sky, | |
| Inquiring wherefore we were born… | 5 |
| For earnest or for jest? | |
| |
| The senses folding thick and dark | |
| About the stifled soul within, | |
| We guess diviner things beyond, | |
| And yearn to them with yearning fond; | 10 |
| We strike out blindly to a mark | |
| Believed in, but not seen. | |
| |
| We vibrate to the pant and thrill | |
| Wherewith Eternity has curled | |
| In serpent-twine about God’s seat; | 15 |
| While, freshening upward to His feet, | |
| In gradual growth His full-leaved will | |
| Expands from world to world. | |
| |
| And, in the tumult and excess | |
| Of act and passion under sun, | 20 |
| We sometimes hear—oh, soft and far, | |
| As silver star did touch with star, | |
| The kiss of Peace and Righteousness | |
| Through all things that are done. | |
| |
| God keeps His holy mysteries | 25 |
| Just on the outside of man’s dream; | |
| In diapason slow, we think | |
| To hear their pinions rise and sink, | |
| While they float pure beneath His eyes, | |
| Like swans adown a stream. | 30 |
| |
| Abstractions, are they, from the forms | |
| Of His great beauty?—exaltations | |
| From His great glory?—strong previsions | |
| Of what we shall be?—intuitions | |
| Of what we are—in calms and storms, | 35 |
| Beyond our peace and passions? | |
| |
| Things nameless! which, in passing so, | |
| Do stroke us with a subtle grace. | |
| We say, ‘Who passes?’—they are dumb. | |
| We cannot see them go or come: | 40 |
| Their touches fall soft, cold, as snow | |
| Upon a blind man’s face. | |
| |
| Yet, touching so, they draw above | |
| Our common thoughts to Heaven’s unknown, | |
| Our daily joy and pain advance | 45 |
| To a divine significance, | |
| Our human love—O mortal love, | |
| That light is not its own! | |
| |
| And sometimes horror chills our blood | |
| To be so near such mystic Things, | 50 |
| And we wrap round us for defence | |
| Our purple manners, moods of sense— | |
| As angels from the face of God | |
| Stand hidden in their wings. | |
| |
| And sometimes through life’s heavy swound | 55 |
| We grope for them!—with strangled breath | |
| We stretch our hands abroad and try | |
| To reach them in our agony,— | |
| And widen, so, the broad life-wound | |
| Which soon is large enough for death. | 60 |
