"FROM everywhere seen, I cannot see. My ray of light Straight through the night Has everywhere been Save back to me. One power is mine, One only, to shine; It is all that I am or do Or think of or love." -- It is fine, O star, Alone, afar, Absorbed, contented, true, To dwell above The divided wills, The hope that kills, And long, long ache that in man Gnaws and is fed In conscious strife On self-planned life That never has done all it can; Whose gleam flickers, blurs red, Never streams in straight line Like that white shaft of thine. Yet forth from self forgot, From creature fused in act white-hot, What power comes to re-create? What joy goes froth to celebrate The life that has been? The wise world saith Such act, such death, From everywhere seen Is blind like thee, O act of light! Rapt pure and bright Is not thy being keen? Hast thou no glee? Want makes men what they are. Can doer of a perfect deed Have any need? Success, like incapacity, Require a fee? Nay, it, like star, Is what it gives.. Is that which lives In our felicity, The buoyancy of admiration, Tingling health of all elation! For, as dun cloth is bleached to white, Exposed to worth men's hearts refine; The lit give light, The shone-on shine, Grow clean, grow fair, Transmute, absorbed in seeing, To full responsive being.. Till joy be everywhere, Yet nowhere any bounded glee Nor soul not to all others free. |