Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

All Is Each, and Each Is All

By William Rounseville Alger (1822–1905)

THE SULLEN mountain, and the bee that hums,

A flying joy, about its flowery base,

Each from the same immediate fountain comes,

And both compose one evanescent race.

Proud man, exulting in his strength and thought,

The torpid clod he treads beneath his way,

One parent Artist’s skill alike hath wrought,

And they are brothers in their fate to-day.

There is no difference in the texture fine

That’s woven through organic rock and grass,

And that which thrills man’s heart in every line,

As o’er its web God’s weaving fingers pass.

The timid flower that decks the fragrant field,

The daring star that tints the solemn dome,

From one propulsive force to being reeled;

Both keep one law and have a single home.

The river and the leaf, the sun and shade,

The bird and stone, the shepherds and their flocks,

Are all of one primeval substance made,—

A single key their common secret locks.

Each atom holds the boundless God concrete

Besides whose abstract Being nothing is;

Each mind, each point of dust, is God complete:—

Who knows but this, the magic key is his!