| Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917. |
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| 183. Awakening |
| By Edward Dowden (1843–1913) |
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| WITH brain o’erworn, with heart a summer clod, | |
| With eye so practised in each form around,— | |
| And all forms mean,—to glance above the ground | |
| Irks it, each day of many days we plod, | |
| Tongue-tied and deaf, along life’s common road. | 5 |
| But suddenly, we know not how, a sound | |
| Of living streams, an odour, a flower crowned | |
| With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod, | |
| And we awake. O joy and deep amaze! | |
| Beneath the everlasting hills we stand, | 10 |
| We hear the voices of the morning seas, | |
| And earnest prophesyings in the land, | |
| While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze | |
| The encompassing great cloud of witnesses. | |
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