Human Life
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…For earnest or for jest?The senses folding thick and darkAbout the stifled soul within,We guess diviner things beyond,And yearn to them with yearning fond;We strike out blindly to a markBelieved in, but not seen.We vibrate to the pant and thrillWherewith Eternity has curledIn serpent-twine about God’s seat;While, freshening upward to His feet,In gradual growth His full-leaved willExpands from world to world.And, in the tumult and excessOf act and passion under sun,We sometimes hear—oh, soft and far,As silver star did touch with star,The kiss of Peace and RighteousnessThrough all things that are done.God keeps His holy mysteriesJust on the outside of man’s dream;In diapason slow, we thinkTo hear their pinions rise and sink,While they float pure beneath His eyes,Like swans adown a stream.Abstractions, are they, from the formsOf His great beauty?—exaltationsFrom His great glory?—strong previsionsOf what we shall be?—intuitionsOf what we are—in calms and storms,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:Their touches fall soft, cold, as snowUpon a blind man’s face.Yet, touching so, they draw aboveOur common thoughts to Heaven’s unknown,Our daily joy and pain advanceTo a divine significance,Our human love—O mortal love,That light is not its own!And sometimes horror chills our bloodTo be so near such mystic Things,And we wrap round us for defenceOur purple manners, moods of sense—As angels from the face of GodStand hidden in their wings.And sometimes through life’s heavy swoundWe grope for them!—with strangled breathWe stretch our hands abroad and tryTo reach them in our agony,—And widen, so, the broad life-woundWhich soon is large enough for death.
