Human Life's Misery

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,

Enquiring wherefore we were born...

      For earnest, or for jest?

The senses folding thick and dark

      About the stifled soul within,

We guess diviner things beyond,

And yearn to them with yearning fond;

We strike out blindly to a mark

      Believed in, but not seen.

We vibrate to the pant and thrill

      Wherewith Eternity has curled

In serpent-twine about God's seat!

While, freshening upward to His feet,

In gradual growth His full-leaved will

      Expands from world to world.

And, in the tumult and excess

      Of act and passion under sun,

We sometimes hear—oh, soft and far,

As silver star did touch with star,

The kiss of Peace and Righteousness

      Through all things that are done.

God keeps his holy mysteries

      Just on the outside of man's dream!

In diapason slow, we think

To hear their pinions rise and sink,

While they float pure beneath His eyes,

      Like swans adown a stream.

Abstractions, are they, from the forms

      Of His great beauty?—exaltations

From His great glory?—strong preyisions

Of what we shall be?—intuitions

Of 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 fell soft—cold—as snow

      Upon a blind man's face.

Yet, touching so, they draw above

      Our common thoughts to Heaven's unknown—

Our daily joy and pain, advance

To a divine significance,—

Our human love—O mortal love,

      That light is not its own!

And, sometimes, horror chills our blood,

      To be so near such mystic Things;

And we wrap round us, for defence,

Our purple manners, moods of sense—

As angels, from the face of God,

      Stand hidden in their wings.

And, sometimes, through Life's heavy swound,

      We grope for them!—with strangled breath

We stretch our hands abroad, and try

To reach them in our agony,—

And widen, so, the broad life-wound,

      Which soon is large enough for death.