183. Awakening

WITH brain o’erworn, with heart a summer clod,

With eye so practised in each form around,—

And all forms mean,—to glance above the ground

Irks it, each day of many days we plod,

Tongue-tied and deaf, along life’s common road.

But suddenly, we know not how, a sound

Of living streams, an odour, a flower crowned

With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod,

And we awake. O joy and deep amaze!

Beneath the everlasting hills we stand,

We hear the voices of the morning seas,

And earnest prophesyings in the land,

While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze

The encompassing great cloud of witnesses.