| |
| WE cannot kindle when we will | |
| The fire which in the heart resides: | |
| The spirit bloweth and is still, | |
| In mystery our soul abides. | |
| But tasks in hours of insight will’d | 5 |
| Can be through hours of gloom fulfill’d. | |
| |
| With aching hands and bleeding feet | |
| We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; | |
| We bear the burden and the heat | |
| Of the long day, and wish t’were done. | 10 |
| Not till the hours of light return, | |
| All we have built do we discern. | |
| |
| Then when the clouds are off the soul, | |
| When thou dost bask in Nature’s eye, | |
| Ask, how she view’d thy self-control, | 15 |
| Thy struggling task’d morality; | |
| Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air | |
| Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair. | |
| |
| And she, whose censure thou dost dread, | |
| Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek, | 20 |
| See, on her face a glow is spread, | |
| A strong emotion on her cheek! | |
| “Ah, child!” she cries, “that strife divine, | |
| Whence was it, for it is not mine. | |
| |
| “There is no effort on my brow, | 25 |
| I do not strive, I do not weep; | |
| I rush with the swift spheres and glow | |
| In joy, and when I will, I sleep. | |
| Yet that severe, that earnest air, | |
| I saw, I felt it once—but where? | 30 |
| |
| “I knew not yet the gauge of time, | |
| Nor wore the manacles of space; | |
| I felt it in some other clime, | |
| I saw it in some other place. | |
| ’Twas when the heavenly house I trod, | 35 |
| And lay upon the breast of God.” | |
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