Human Lifes Mystery

We sow the glebe, we reap the corn,     We build the house where we may rest,     And then, at moments, suddenly,     We look up to the great wide sky,     Inquiring wherefore we were born     For earnest or for jest?     The senses folding thick and dark     About the stifled soul within,     We guess diviner things beyond,     And yearn to them with yearning fond;     We strike out blindly to a mark     Believed in, but not seen.     We vibrate to the pant and thrill     Wherewith Eternity has curled     In serpent-twine about Gods seat;     While, freshening upward to His feet,     In gradual growth His full-leaved will     Expands from world to world.     And, in the tumult and excess     Of act and passion under sun,     We sometimes hear, oh, soft and far,     As silver star did touch with star,     The kiss of Peace and Righteousness     Through all things that are done.     God keeps His holy mysteries     Just on the outside of mans dream;     In diapason slow, we think     To hear their pinions rise and sink,     While they float pure beneath His eyes,     Like swans adown a stream.     Abstractions, are they, from the forms     Of His great beauty? exaltations     From His great glory? strong previsions     Of what we shall be? intuitions     Of what we are, in calms and storms,     Beyond our peace and passions?     Things nameless! which, in passing so,     Do stroke us with a subtle grace.     We say, Who passes? they are dumb.     We cannot see them go or come:     Their touches fall soft, cold, as snow     Upon a blind mans face.     Yet, touching so, they draw above     Our common thoughts to Heavens unknown,     Our daily joy and pain advance     To a divine significance,     Our human love, O mortal love,     That light is not its own!     And sometimes horror chills our blood     To be so near such mystic Things,     And we wrap round us for defence     Our purple manners, moods of sense,     As angels from the face of God     Stand hidden in their wings.     And sometimes through lifes heavy swound     We grope for them! with strangled breath     We stretch our hands abroad and try     To reach them in our agony,     And widen, so, the broad life-wound     Which soon is large enough for death.