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| MY God, I love the world, | |
| I love it well— | |
| Its wonder, and fairness, and delight— | |
| More than my tongue can tell; | |
| And ever in my heart, like morning clouds | 5 |
| New earth-loves rise and swell. | |
| |
| Lilies I love, and stars, | |
| Dewdrops, and the great sea; | |
| Colour, and form, and sound, | |
| Combining variously; | 10 |
| The rush of the wind, and the overhanging vast— | |
| Voiceless immensity. | |
| |
| Thou world-creator art, | |
| World-lover too; | |
| In delight didst found the deep, | 15 |
| In delight uprear the blue; | |
| And with an infinite love and carefulness | |
| The wide earth furnish through. | |
| |
| My God, I am afraid of Thee, I am afraid— | |
| Thou art so silent, and so terrible; | 20 |
| And oft I muse upon Thee in the deep night dead, | |
| Listening as for a voice that shall my spirit tell, | |
| To be of comfort and of courage, for that all is well. | |
| |
| Of thoughts uncounted as the stars, | |
| Which burn undimm’d from old eternity, | 25 |
| Oh, everlasting God! | |
| Thy Spirit is a sky— | |
| A brighten’d dark, enrounding every world | |
| With stillness of serenest majesty: | |
| Fit several forms of the same splendour | 30 |
| Thou to beholding worlds dost render, | |
| In starry wonder of a thousand skies, | |
| Beheld by creature-eyes: | |
| Who in the glorious part have symbol bright | |
| Of the uncomprehended Infinite. | 35 |
| |
| But if as the great dark art Thou, unknown, | |
| Thou, God reveal’d, art as the sweet noon blue; | |
| Soft canopying mercy in the Christ is shown, | |
| And the azure of His love Thy face beams through, | |
| Looking forth, like the sun, to comfort and to bless, | 40 |
| And with beauty over-lighting the rough wilderness. | |
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