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I I AM, Thou Anxious One. Dost Thou not hear | |
| My surging senses break ’gainst Thee alone? | |
| My feelings all, that snow-white wings have grown, | |
| Fly round Thy visage in a sphere. | |
| Dost Thou not see my soul now standing near, | 5 |
| Clad in a garb of stillness, facing Thee? | |
| Doth not my spring-like prayer, as on a tree, | |
| Grow ripe beneath Thy glance, that mighty beam? | |
| If Thou the Dreamer art, I am Thy dream. | |
| But when Thou art awake, I am Thy will, | 10 |
| And then I gain a majesty sublime | |
| And spread like star-lit heavens, calm and still, | |
| Above this odd, fantastic city, Time. | |
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II All those who live and move away | |
| From Time, that city of distress, | 15 |
| All who their hands on stillness lay, | |
| Upon a place where no roads stray, | |
| That hardly doth a name possess— | |
| Thee, blessing high of every day, | |
| They name, and write in gentleness: | 20 |
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| But prayers alone are real—naught more; | |
| Our hands are sanctified—behold! | |
| What they have fashioned doth implore: | |
| If one doth mow, or sacred lore | |
| Doth paint—the very tools adore, | 25 |
| In toil a piety unfold. | |
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| And time in many shapes is told. | |
| We hear of time and yet we do | |
| The everlasting and the old. | |
| We know that God us doth enfold | 30 |
| Grand like a beard, a garment, too. | |
| We lie within His glory’s gold, | |
| As veins the hard basalt run through. | |
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