| COULD my heart but see Creation as God sees it,—from within; | |
| See His grace behind its beauty, see His will behind its force; | |
| See the flame of life shoot upward when the April days begin; | |
| See the wave of life rush outward from its pure eternal source; | |
| |
| Could I see the summer sunrise glow with God’s transcendent hope; | 5 |
| See His peace upon the waters in the moonlit summer night; | |
| See Him nearer still when, blinded, in the depths of gloom I grope,— | |
| See the darkness flash and quiver with the gladness of His light; | |
| |
| Could I see the red-hot passion of His love resistless burn | |
| Through the dumb despair of winter, through the frozen lifeless clod;— | 10 |
| Could I see what lies around me as God sees it, I should learn | |
| That its outward life is nothing, that its inward life is God. | |
| |
| Vain the dream! To spirit only is the spirit-life revealed: | |
| God alone can see God’s glory: God alone can feel God’s love. | |
| By myself the soul of Nature from myself is still concealed; | 15 |
| And the earth is still around me, and the skies are still above. | |
| |
| Vain the dream! I cannot mingle with the all-sustaining soul: | |
| I am prisoned in my senses; I am pinioned by my pride; | |
| I am severed by my selfhood from the world-life of the Whole; | |
| And my world is near and narrow, and God’s world is waste and wide. | 20 |
| |
| Vain the dream! Yet in the morning, when the eastern skies are red, | |
| When the dew is on the meadows, when the lark soars up and sings,— | |
| Leaps a sudden flame within me from its ashes pale and dead, | |
| And I see God’s beauty burning through the veil of outward things. | |
| |
| Brighter grows the veil and clearer, till, beyond all fear and doubt, | 25 |
| I am ravished by God’s splendour into oneness with His rest; | |
| And I draw the world within me, and I send my soul without; | |
| And God’s pulse is in my bosom, and I lie upon God’s breast. | |
| |
| Dies the beatific vision in the moment of its birth; | |
| Dies, but in its death transfigures all the sequence of my days; | 30 |
| Dies, but dying crowns with triumph all the travail of the earth, | |
| Till its harsh discordant murmurs swell into a psalm of praise. | |
| |
| Then a yearning comes upon me to be drawn at last by death, | |
| Drawn into the mystic circle in which all things live and move, | |
| Drawn into the mystic circle of the love which is God’s breath,— | 35 |
| Love creative, love receptive, love of loving, love of love. | |
| |
| God! the One, the All of Being! let me lose my life in Thine; | |
| Let me be what Thou hast made me, be a quiver of Thy flame. | |
| Purge my self from self’s pollution; burn it into life divine; | |
| Burn it till it dies triumphant in the firespring whence it came. | 40 |
