'To show the skies, and tether to the sod! A daunting gift!' we mourn in our long strife. And God is more than all our thought of God; E'en life itself more than our thought of life, And that is all we know--and it is noon, Our little day will soon be done--how soon! O let us to ourselves be dutiful: We are not satisfied, we have wanted all, Not alone beauty, but that Beautiful; A lifted veil, an answering mystical. Ever men plead, and plain, admire, implore, 'Why gavest Thou so much--and yet--not more? We are but let to look, and Hope is weighed.' Yet, say the Indian words of sweet renown, 'The doomèd tree withholdeth not her shade From him that bears the axe to cut her down;' Is hope cut down, dead, doomed, all is vain: The third day dawns, she too has risen again (For Faith is ours by gift, but Hope by right), And walks among us whispering as of yore: 'Glory and grace are thrown thee with the light; Search, if not yet thou touch the mystic shore; Immanent beauty and good are nigh at hand, For infants laugh and snowdrops bloom in the land. Thou shalt have more anon.' What more? in sooth, The mother of to-morrow is to-day, And brings forth after her kind. There is no ruth On the heart's sigh, that 'more' is hidden away, And man's to-morrow yet shall pine and yearn; He shall surmise, and he shall not discern, But list the lark, and want the rapturous cries And passioning of morning stars that sing Together; mark the meadow-orchis rise And think it freckled after an angel's wing; Absent desire his land, and feel this, one With the great drawing of the central sun. But not to all such dower, for there be eyes Are colour-blind, and souls are spirit-blind. Those never saw the blush in sunset skies, Nor the others caught a sense not made of words As if were spirits about, that sailed the wind And sank and settled on the boughs like birds. Yet such for aye divided from us are As other galaxies that seem no more Than a little golden millet-seed afar. Divided; swarming down some flat lee shore, Then risen, while all the air that takes no word Tingles, and trembles as with cries not heard. For they can come no nearer. There is found No meeting point. We have pierced the lodging-place Of stars that cluster'd with their peers lie bound, Embedded thick, sunk in the seas of space, Fortunate orbs that know not night, for all Are suns;--but we have never heard that call, Nor learned it in our world, our citadel With outworks of a Power about it traced; Nor why we needs must sin who would do well, Nor why the want of love, nor why its waste, Nor how by dying of One should all be sped, Nor where, O Lord, thou hast laid up our dead. But Hope is ours by right, and Faith by gift. Though Time be as a moon upon the wane, Who walk with Faith far up the azure lift Oft hear her talk of lights to wax again. 'If man be lost,' she cries, 'in this vast sea Of being,--lost--he would be lost with Thee