“Happy children round me play;
Plighted lovers near me stray;
Insects chirping in the night
Thrill me with obscure delight;
“Circling seasons as they run,
Couriers of the lavish sun,
Dower me with treasure lent
By each potent element;
“Ministers to me the whole
Zonéd globe from pole to pole;
In my buds and blossoms beat
Pulses from the central heat;—
“Everything is part of me,
Firmament and moving sea;
I of all that is am part,
Stone and star and human heart.
“Primal Cause etern, self-wrought,
Majesty transcending thought,
This my substance and my soul,
Origin, desire, and goal.
“Through creation’s vasty range
Blows the winter blast of change;
Leaf-like from the Life-Tree whirled
World shall rot on ruined world.
“Hail, inexorable hour
Fraught with clysmian wrack and stour
Welcome, transmutation’s course
And the cosmic rage of Force.
“Yond the atomed universe
Now we gather, now disperse,—
Unto darkling chaos tost,
Back from the chaos—nothing lost.
“Forth abysmal voids of death
Resurrection issueth:—
Flaming ether, quickened clod,
Bodying new forms of God.
“Harken, Moon!—When I am gone,
I, re-born, shall burgeon on;
Out thine ashes shall arise
Other Thou, to ride the skies.”