| Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917. |
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| 232. Life |
| By Margaret Deland (b. 1857) |
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| BY one great Heart the Universe is stirred: | |
| By Its strong pulse, stars climb the darkening blue; | |
| It throbs in each fresh sunset’s changing hue, | |
| And thrills through low sweet song of every bird: | |
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| By It, the plunging blood reds all men’s veins; | 5 |
| Joy feels that heart against his rapturous own, | |
| And on It, Sorrow breathes her sharpest groan; | |
| It bounds through gladnesses and deepest pains. | |
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| Passionless beating through all Time and Space, | |
| Relentless, calm, majestic in Its march, | 10 |
| Alike, though Nature shake heaven’s endless arch, | |
| Or man’s heart break, because of some dead face! | |
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| ’Tis felt in sunshine greening the soft sod, | |
| In children’s smiling, as in mother’s tears; | |
| And, for strange comfort, through the aching years, | 15 |
| Men’s hungry souls have named that great Heart, God! | |
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