| FROM age to age in the public place, | |
| With the under steps in view, | |
| The stairway stands, having earth for base, | |
| But the heavens it passes through. | |
| |
| O height and deep, | 5 |
| And the quests, in sleep, | |
| Yet the Word of the King says well, | |
| That the heart of the King is unsearchable. | |
| |
| Of the utmost steps there are legends grand, | |
| And far stars shine as they roll; | 10 |
| But, of child or man in the wonderful land, | |
| Is there one who has scaled the whole? | |
| |
| Yet the great hope stirs, | |
| Though His thoughts as yours | |
| Are not, since the first man fell; | 15 |
| For the heart of the King is unsearchable. | |
| |
| A pulsing song of the stairway strange | |
| Sing, lark, dissolved in the sky! | |
| But no, for it passes beyond the range | |
| Of thy song and thy soaring high. | 20 |
| |
| The star is kin | |
| To our soul within— | |
| God orders His world so well: | |
| Yet the heart of the King is unsearchable. | |
| |
| They say that the angels thereby come down, | 25 |
| Thereby do the saints ascend, | |
| And that God’s light shining from God’s own Town | |
| May be seen at the stairway’s end: | |
| |
| For good and ill | |
| May be mixed at will, | 30 |
| The false shew true by a spell, | |
| But the heart of the King is unsearchable. | |
| |
| Now, the stairway stands by the noisy mart | |
| And the stairway stands by the sea; | |
| About it pulses the world’s great heart | 35 |
| And the heart of yourself and me. | |
| |
| We may read amiss | |
| Both in that and this, | |
| And the truth we read in a well; | |
| Since the heart of the King is unsearchable | 40 |
| |
| For a few steps here and a few steps there | |
| It is fill’d with our voices loud, | |
| But above these slumbers the silent air | |
| And the hush of a dreaming cloud. | |
| |
| In the strain and stress | 45 |
| Of that silentness, | |
| Our hearts for the height may swell; | |
| But the heart of the King is unsearchable. | |
| |
| Some few of us, fill’d with a holy fire, | |
| The Cross and the Christ have kiss’d; | 50 |
| We have sworn to achieve our soul’s desire | |
| By mass and evangelist: | |
| |
| Of step the third | |
| I can bring down word, | |
| And you on the fifth may dwell; | 55 |
| Yet the heart of the King is unsearchable. | |
| |
| As each of us stands at his place assign’d | |
| And ponders the things we love, | |
| It is meet and right we should call to mind | |
| That some must have pass’d above: | 60 |
| |
| Yes, some there are | |
| Who have pass’d so far, | |
| They have never return’d to tell; | |
| And the heart of the King is unsearchable. | |
| |
| Some glimpse at least of the end we glean, | 65 |
| Of the spiral curve and plan; | |
| For stretch as it may through the worlds unseen, | |
| They are ever the worlds of man; | |
| |
| And—with all spaces— | |
| His mind embraces | 70 |
| The way of the stairs as well— | |
| For his heart, like the King’s, is unsearchable. | |
