232. Life

BY one great Heart the Universe is stirred:

By Its strong pulse, stars climb the darkening blue;

It throbs in each fresh sunset’s changing hue,

And thrills through low sweet song of every bird:

By It, the plunging blood reds all men’s veins;

Joy feels that heart against his rapturous own,

And on It, Sorrow breathes her sharpest groan;

It bounds through gladnesses and deepest pains.

Passionless beating through all Time and Space,

Relentless, calm, majestic in Its march,

Alike, though Nature shake heaven’s endless arch,

Or man’s heart break, because of some dead face!

’Tis felt in sunshine greening the soft sod,

In children’s smiling, as in mother’s tears;

And, for strange comfort, through the aching years,

Men’s hungry souls have named that great Heart, God!