215. The Creed of My Heart

A FLAME in my heart is kindled by the might of the morn’s pure breath;

A passion beyond all passion; a faith that eclipses faith;

A joy that is more than gladness; a hope that outsoars desire;

A love that consumes and quickens; a soul-transfiguring fire.

My life is possessed and mastered: my heart is inspired and filled.

All other visions have faded: all other voices are stilled.

My doubts are vainer than shadows: my fears are idler than dreams:

They vanish like breaking bubbles, those old soul-torturing themes.

The riddles of life are cancelled, the problems that bred despair:

I cannot guess them or solve them, but I know that they are not there.

They are past, they are all forgotten, the breeze has blown them away;

For life’s inscrutable meaning is clear as the dawn of day.

It is there—the secret of Nature—there in the morning’s glow;

There in the speaking stillness; there in the rose-flushed snow.

It is here in the joy and rapture; here in my pulsing breast:

I feel what has ne’er been spoken: I know what has ne’er been guessed.

The rose-lit clouds of morning; the sun-kissed mountain heights;

The orient streaks and flushes; the mingling shadows and lights;

The flow of the lonely river; the voice of its distant stream;

The mists that rise from the meadows, lit up by the sun’s first beam;—

They mingle and melt as I watch them; melt and mingle and die.

The land is one with the water: the earth is one with the sky.

The parts are as parts no longer: Nature is All and One:

Her life is achieved, completed: her days of waiting are done

I breathe the breath of the morning. I am one with the one World-Soul.

I live my own life no longer, but the life of the living Whole.

I am more than self: I am selfless: I am more than self: I am I.

I have found the springs of my being in the flush of the eastern sky.

I—the true self, the spirit, the self that is born of death—

I have found the flame of my being in the morn’s ambrosial breath.

I lose my life for a season: I lose it beyond recall:

But I find it renewed, rekindled, in the life of the One, the All.

I look not forward or backward: the abysses of time are nought.

From pole to pole of the heavens I pass in a flash of thought.

I clasp the world to my bosom: I feel its pulse in my breast,—

The pulse of measureless motion, the pulse of fathomless rest.

Is it motion or rest that thrills me? Is it lightning or moonlit peace?

Am I freer than waves of ether, or prisoned beyond release?

I know not; but through my spirit, within me, around, above,

The world-wide river is streaming, the river of life and love.

Silent, serene, eternal, passionless, perfect, pure;—

I may not measure its windings, but I know that its aim is sure.

In its purity seethes all passion: in its silence resounds all song:

Its strength is builded of weakness: its right is woven of wrong.

I am borne afar on its bosom; yet its source and its goal are mine,

From the sacred springs of Creation to the ocean of love Divine.

I have ceased to think or to reason: there is nothing to ponder or prove:

I hope, I believe no longer: I am lost in a dream of love.

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