| I HAVE gone the whole round of Creation: I saw and I spoke! | |
| I, a work of God’s hand for that purpose, received in my brain | |
| And pronounced on the rest of His handwork—returned Him again | |
| His creation’s approval or censure: I spoke as I saw. | |
| I report, as a man may of God’s work—all’s love, yet all’s law | 5 |
| Now I lay down the judgeship He lent me. Each faculty tasked | |
| To perceive Him, has gained an abyss, where a dewdrop was asked. | |
| Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare. | |
| Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care! | |
| Do I task any faculty highest, to image success? | 10 |
| I but open my eyes,—and perfection, no more and no less, | |
| In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God | |
| In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod. | |
| And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew | |
| (With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too) | 15 |
| The submission of Man’s nothing-perfect to God’s All Complete, | |
| As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His feet! | |
| Yet with all this abounding experience, this Deity known, | |
| I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own. | |
| There’s a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink, | 20 |
| I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as I think) | |
| Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst | |
| E’en the Giver in one gift.—Behold! I could love if I durst! | |
| But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o’ertake | |
| God’s own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love’s sake. | 25 |
| —What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small, | |
| Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appal? | |
| In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all? | |
| Do I find love so full in my nature, God’s ultimate gift, | |
| That I doubt His own love can compete with it? here, the parts shift? | 30 |
| Here, the creature surpass the Creator, the end, what Began? | |
| Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man, | |
| And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, who yet alone can? | |
| Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power, | |
| To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower | 35 |
| Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul, | |
| Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole? | |
| And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest) | |
| These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best? | |
| Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height | 40 |
| This perfection—succeed with life’s dayspring, death’s minute of night? | |
| Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the mistake, | |
| Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now—and bid him awake | |
| From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set | |
| Clear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony yet | 45 |
| To be run, and continued, and ended—who knows?—or endure! | |
| The man taught enough by life’s dream, of the rest to make sure; | |
| By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss, | |
| And the next world’s reward and repose, by the struggles in this. | |
| |
| I believe it! ’tis Thou, God, that givest, ’tis I who receive: | 50 |
| In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to believe. | |
| All’s one gift: Thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to my prayer | |
| As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air. | |
| From Thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth: | |
| I will?—the mere atoms despise me! why am I not loth | 55 |
| To look that, even that in the face too? why is it I dare | |
| Think but lightly of such impuissance? what stops my despair? | |
| This;—’tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do! | |
| See the King—I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through. | |
| Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, | 60 |
| To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would—knowing which, | |
| I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now! | |
| Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou—so wilt Thou! | |
| So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown— | |
| And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down | 65 |
| One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath, | |
| Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death! | |
| As Thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved | |
| Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved! | |
| He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak. | 70 |
| ’Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek | |
| In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be | |
| A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me, | |
| Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand | |
| Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand! | 75 |
