| O VAST Rondure, swimming in space, | |
| Cover’d all over with visible power and beauty, | |
| Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness, | |
| Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above, | |
| Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees, | 5 |
| With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention, | |
| Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee. | |
| |
| Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating, | |
| Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them, | |
| Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations, | 10 |
| With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with neverhappy hearts, | |
| With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life? | |
| |
| Ah, who shall soothe these feverish children? | |
| Who justify these restless explorations? | |
| Who speak the secret of impassive earth? | 15 |
| Who bind it to us? what is this separate Nature so unnatural? | |
| What is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours, | |
| Cold earth, the place of graves.) | |
| |
| Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out, | |
| Perhaps even now the time has arrived. | 20 |
| After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,) | |
| After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work, | |
| After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist, | |
| Finally shall come the poet worthy that name, | |
| The true son of God shall come singing his songs. | 25 |
| |
| Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified; | |
| All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth’d, | |
| All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told, | |
| All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook’d and link’d together, | |
| The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely justified, | 30 |
| Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish’d and compacted by the true son of God, the poet, | |
| (He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains, | |
| He shall double the cape of Good Hope to some purpose,) | |
| Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more, | |
| The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.… | 35 |
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| Passage indeed O soul to primal thought, | |
| Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness, | |
| The young maturity of brood and bloom, | |
| To realms of budding bibles. | |
| |
| O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me, | 40 |
| Thy circumnavigation of the world begin, | |
| Of man, the voyage of his mind’s return, | |
| To reason’s early paradise, | |
| Back, back to wisdom’s birth, to innocent intuitions, | |
| Again with fair creation. | 45 |
| |
| O we can wait no longer, | |
| We too take ship O soul | |
| Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas, | |
| Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail, | |
| Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,) | 50 |
| Caroling free, singing our song of God, | |
| Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration. | |
| |
| With laugh and many a kiss, | |
| (Let others deprecate, let others weep for sin, remorse, humiliation,) | |
| O soul thou pleasest me, I thee. | 55 |
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| Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in God, | |
| But with the mystery of God we dare not dally. | |
| |
| O soul thou pleasest me, I thee, | |
| Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night, | |
| Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death, like waters flowing, | 60 |
| Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite, | |
| Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over, | |
| Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee, | |
| I and my soul to range in range of thee. | |
| |
| O Thou transcendent, | 65 |
| Nameless, the fibre and the breath, | |
| Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them, | |
| Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving, | |
| Thou moral, spiritual fountain—affection’s source—thou reservoir, | |
| (O pensive soul of me—O thirst unsatisfied—waitest not there? | 70 |
| |
| Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?) | |
| Thou pulse—thou motive of the stars, suns, systems, | |
| That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, | |
| Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space, | |
| How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out of myself, | 75 |
| I could not launch, to those, superior universes? | |
| |
| Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, | |
| At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, | |
| But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me, | |
| And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs, | 80 |
| Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, | |
| And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space. | |
| |
| Greater than stars or suns, | |
| Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth; | |
| What love than thine and ours could wider amplify? | 85 |
| What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours O soul? | |
| What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength? | |
| What cheerful willingness for others’ sake to give up all? | |
| For others’ sake to suffer all? | |
| |
| Reckoning ahead O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d, | 90 |
| The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done, | |
| Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain’d, | |
| As fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found, | |
| The Younger melts in fondness in his arms. | |
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| Passage to more than India! | 95 |
| Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights? | |
| O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those? | |
| Disportest thou on waters such as those? | |
| Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas? | |
| Then have thy bent unleash’d. | 100 |
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| Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas! | |
| Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems! | |
| You, strew’d with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living, never reach’d you. | |
| |
| Passage to more than India! | |
| O secret of the earth and sky! | 105 |
| Of you O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers! | |
| Of you O woods and fields! of you strong mountains of my land! | |
| Of you O prairies! of you gray rocks! | |
| O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows! | |
| O day and night, passage to you! | 110 |
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| O sun and moon and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter! | |
| Passage to you! | |
| |
| Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! | |
| Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor! | |
| Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail! | 115 |
| Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? | |
| Have we not grovel’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes? | |
| Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough? | |
| Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only, | |
| Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me, | 120 |
| For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, | |
| And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. | |
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| O my brave soul! | |
| O farther farther sail! | |
| O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God? | 125 |
| O farther, farther, farther sail! | |
