O Life, why dost thou close me up in death? O Health, why make me inhabit heaviness?-- I ask, yet know: the sum of this distress, Pang-haunted body, sore-dismayed mind, Is but the egg that rounds the winged faith; When that its path into the air shall find, My heart will follow, high above cold, rain, and wind. 24. I can no more than lift my weary eyes; Therefore I lift my weary eyes--no more. But my eyes pull my heart, and that, before 'Tis well awake, knocks where the conscience lies; Conscience runs quick to the spirit's hidden door: Straightway, from every sky-ward window, cries Up to the Father's listening ears arise. 25. Not in my fancy now I search to find thee; Not in its loftiest forms would shape or bind thee; I cry to one whom I can never know, Filling me with an infinite overflow; Not to a shape that dwells within my heart, Clothed in perfections love and truth assigned thee, But to the God thou knowest that thou art. 26. Not, Lord, because I have done well or ill; Not that my mind looks up to thee clear-eyed; Not that it struggles in fast cerements tied; Not that I need thee daily sorer still; Not that I wretched, wander from thy will; Not now for any cause to thee I cry, But this, that thou art thou, and here am I. 27. Yestereve, Death came, and knocked at my thin door. I from my window looked: the thing I saw, The shape uncouth, I had not seen before. I was disturbed--with fear, in sooth, not awe; Whereof ashamed, I instantly did rouse My will to seek thee--only to fear the more: Alas! I could not find thee in the house. 28. I was like Peter when he began to sink. To thee a new prayer therefore I have got-- That, when Death comes in earnest to my door, Thou wouldst thyself go, when the latch doth clink, And lead him to my room, up to my cot; Then hold thy child's hand, hold and leave him not, Till Death has done with him for evermore. 29. Till Death has done with him?--Ah, leave me then! And Death has done with me, oh, nevermore! He comes--and goes--to leave me in thy arms, Nearer thy heart, oh, nearer than before! To lay thy child, naked, new-born again Of mother earth, crept free through many harms, Upon thy bosom--still to the very core. 30. Come to me, Lord: I will not speculate how, Nor think at which door I would have thee appear, Nor put off calling till my floors be swept, But cry, "Come, Lord, come any way, come now." Doors, windows, I throw wide; my head I bow, And sit like some one who so long has slept That he knows nothing till his life draw near. 31.