Classic Poem

O First, and of all living things the Life,
Of all that is, the Being, and the Power
Of all that acts,—O Fire! and thou, O Light,
That art of fire the garment; and the form,
Knowledge and consciousness of all, O Word!
Where is thy centre? where the point intense,
Where all thy rays converge, or whence depart?
I see the host of stars, I see the sun,
And his pale shadow painted on the night,—
I see the moon—but these are not thy seat:
The wakeful stars roam wonder-eyed through heaven;
Like me they seek their source; they and the sun
Live in the skirts of darkness, and would cease,
In thy unclouded blaze, to be or shine.

Where is thy bound? above all worlds thou art,
Above all heavens; in depth beneath the grave,—
Above, beneath, within, surrounding all,
Heaven's higher heaven, and the abyss of hell.
Where thought sinks tired, or back upon itself,
Returns compelled, thou art; and there, as here,
Conscious of All. Thou only art alone;
Silence, and rest, and solitude, are thine
And only thine. The sun's returnless rays
Are quenched in night, are quenched in thee, O God!
But thou, Sun of the Universe! thy beams,
Viewless and immaterial, spread beyond
Even our thought of thee, our widest thought
And strained conception of thy boundlessness.
All forms and things and images of things
Breathed on the frore of darkness, and congealed,
Are but a vapor by the eternal Soul
And by the Word revealed.


Then what are we,
Who worship thee in Sun, and Moon, and Stars,
And earthly fires unseen of eyes impure?—
Motes in the gleam of all-creating Light!
Thin Shadows, Atoms, conscious of ourselves,
Only as we are less, in kind, than thee;
And yet than thee we only can be less,
While we perceive, O God! and worship thee.