But oftenest the world is very still;
A light breeze o’er the land will break and shiver
With musical low melancholy thrill
Among the grasses and the reeds for ever.
I ask no more. The liquid summer light
About this poplar, when its leaves are green,
The change, when glitteringly bare and white
Its branches on the wintry blue are seen.
All are but changes of delight to me,
In each I lose myself, and live, and die,
And rise upon the next with equal glee,
Like one who feasts for ever with his eye.
I ask no more. The slender drooping grace
Of stem and blade seen thus obliquely clear
Suffice me while the moments interlace
To minutes and the minutes to a year.
The centuries soon pass, and, while I live,
The world, which without me were but a dream,
Its changing image to my mind shall give,—
One image and one aspect of its scheme.
THE WORLD-SPIRIT
Like soundless summer lightning seen afar,
A halo o’er the grave of all mankind,
O undefinèd dream-embosomed star,
O charm of human love and sorrow twined:
Far, far away beyond the world’s bright streams,
Over the ruined spaces of the lands,
Thy beauty, floating slowly, ever seems
To shine most glorious; then from out our hands
To fade and vanish, evermore to be
Our sorrow, our sweet longing sadly borne,
Our incommunicable mystery
Shrined in the soul’s long night before the morn.