I dreamed again, and lo, a solemn glory
Transfigured earth and sea;
The vibrant universe revealed a story
Of love and power to me.
Oh, never was such light on earth beholden,
Save when the sacred gleam,
Upon the spirits of the seers olden,
Breathed mystery and dream.

I think that haply angel hands had chanced
The door of some bright zone
Of heaven to open, so to me there glanced
The radiance of the throne.
'Twas not as earth-light that must go unbending
Into the fields afar,
But all diffuse, it spread abroad unending
And circled every star.

Upon my consciousness was strange appealing
Of unseen presence borne;
I walked alert with glow of comrade-feeling
Through all the peaceful morn.
I knew a master hand the leaves was tinting
In gold and crimson tone;
A face of beauty all the earth was glinting
With glory not its own.

Where Neptune's breath the salty spray is sweeping
Along the silent seas
There dwells the God of gods whose will unsleeping
Moves the eternities.
I peer into the blue serene above me
Where constellations roll,
And find a Power that cares for me and loves me,
The Keeper of my soul.

And where, unseen within the stellar spaces,
The soundless ether stream
Flows on among the worlds and shows no traces
Of life or death or dream,
Intenser vision, down the deep ways turning,
Is startled to surprise,
Emotion, will and consciousness discerning
Throughout the far-flung skies.

And not in vastness only, I discovered
A Soul of love and might;
Above the dew-drop on the grass-blade hovered
The clear shekinah light.
As in the daisy's or the rose's petal
His praises never cease,
The noisome insect and the stinging nettle
Are temples of His peace.

For sorrow is a messenger of pity
That hasteth from the strife
To usher us, though joy hath fled the city,
To higher planes of life.
Greater than pain they grow who bravely suffer
Beneath the stinging rods,
And stronger are their thews, their sinews tougher,
Who wrestle with the gods.

Soul of the Universe! expression waiteth
An ampler word than mine;
The noblest human utterance abateth
A splendour so divine.
No speech could ever tell the radiant story
Of love and truth and law;
I would my words might even hint the glory
That in my dream I saw: —

The Universe is God, and all is heaven
That wins into the height;
Ills are by justice healed and good is leaven
To fill the worlds with light.
The Universe is form and grace and beauty —
All this in dream I saw —
Is godlike strength and great-souled love and duty,
Is firm but kindly law.

The Universe is truth, falsehood consuming,
Is light, the hells to chase
Out of the minds of men, their souls illuming
With visions of God's face.
The Universe is power. The gross things even
That all our spirits mar,
And all the elements they blend and weave in
To make them what they are.

Are wholesome symbols of our birth, agreeing
That God and man are one;
The vinculum that binds our outer being
In union with the sun.
Thus man, the creature, too is universal,
Awhile in bonds of sense;
His life on earth at best a time-rehearsal
Until his faring hence.

Babe at earth's mother-breast, soon to inherit
The larger life above;
One with the unseen Fountain of all Spirit,
The Universal Love.
So is our manhood child of God essential,
Still kept in swaddling bands,
To grow to final Christhood all-potential,
Within the Potter's hands.

To be the potter in increasing measure
Is man's predestined part,
Co-worker with the Universe and treasure
Immortal of its heart;
Sharing its fortunes, physical, eternal,
Rising to highest goal
To live on spirit planes, august, supernal,
As partner of the Whole.

I feed my soul with reverence and wonder,
With mystery, truth and art;
With starlight and with storm, with dew and thunder
I nourish my young heart;
Grow sturdy in the struggle, bold and fearless
On universal seas,
In all vicissitudes of sorrow, tearless,
Patient on Calvaries.

So build my spirit out of things supernal,
My food, love, light and dream,
My breath, the Infinite, my lamp eternal,
The co-eternal Beam.
No more my soul gropes in the dark, unseeing,
Or trembles in the night,
No longer turns to others; my own being
Is love and power and light.

I pierce the mists before my sunrise drifting;
My soul is dark no more,
My hope anew its radiant altars lifting
On every life-lit shore.
Meanwhile the Universe new bodies finds me
And calls me to resign
Each instrument of life that frees or binds me
For one more subtly fine.

I hear each note of nature's music breathing,
Each song of mountain pine,
Each bird-voice with the whispering winds enwreathing
Some prophecy of mine.
The resonance of cataracts o'er reaches
Of precipice and gorge,
The thunders of the billows on their beaches,
The glacier's downward urge.

The voiceless symphony of moor and highland,
The rainbow on the mist,
The white moon-shield above the slumber-island,
The mirror-lake, star-kist,
The life of budding leaf and spray and branches,
The dew upon the sod,
The roar of downward-rushing avalanches,
Are eloquent of God.

My eye sweeps far-extended plains of vision
And golden seas of light;
Upon my ear fall cadences Elysian
Like music in the night;
The Universe for me is ever weaving
New bodies from the sun
Thrilled with the awe and gladness of perceiving
That God and man are one.

No hostile force can e'er again affright me
Or prove me undivine;
The Universe will send no foe to fight me.
Are not its conflicts mine?
I feel the sweep of the immortal battle;
The storm-wind o'er the vast;
The lightning in my soul — the thunder's rattle
Blares like a northern blast.

How shall the Universe its own creation,
Life of its life destroy?
How bring to nothingness or desolation
The soul of its own joy?
The echo of itself, not merely fashioned
Of clay, God's outer part,
But fibre of His being, love-impassioned,
The glory of His heart!

Drive on, then, winds of God, drive on forever
Across the shoreless sea;
The soul's a boundless deep, exhausted never
By full discovery.
In storm or calm, that soundless ocean sweeping
Is still the sailor's goal;
The destiny of every man is leaping
To birth in his own soul.