We grope for them!—with strangled breath

While, freshening upward to His feet,

And, in the tumult and excess

We say, ‘Who passes?’—they are dumb.

As angels from the face of God

To be so near such mystic Things,

Their touches fall soft, cold, as snow

We sometimes hear—oh, soft and far,

To hear their pinions rise and sink,

Stand hidden in their wings九-九-藏-书-网.

Yet, touching so, they draw above

We stretch our hands abroad and try

Of what we are—in calms and storms,

Expands from world to world.

Our human love—O mortal love,

In diapason slow, we think

The senses folding thick and dark

We look up to the great wide sky,

Of act and passion under sun,

We build the house where we may rest,

As silv九-九-藏-书-网er star did touch with star,

Which soon is large enough for death.

Things nameless! which, in passing so,

To reach them in our agony,—

Of what we shall be?—intuitions

In serpent-twine about God’s seat;

About the stifled soul within,

We strike out blindly to a mark

The kiss of Peace and Righteousness

While twww•９9lｉb•nｅｔhey float pure beneath His eyes,

For earnest or for jest?

Like swans adown a stream.

God keeps His holy mysteries

Abstractions, are they, from the forms

In gradual growth His full-leaved will

Through all things that are done.

Beyond our peace and passions?

Just on the outside of man’s dream;

Inquiring wherefore we were born…

And sometimes horror cwww.99lib.nethills our blood

We cannot see them go or come:

And sometimes through life’s heavy swound

And widen, so, the broad life-wound

We sow the glebe, we reap the corn,

That light is not its own!

From His great glory?—strong previsions

Wherewith Eternity has curled

To a divine significance,

Our daily joy and pain advance

Upon a blind man’s face.

Our purple manner9９lｉｂ•nｅts, moods of sense—

We guess diviner things beyond,

Do stroke us with a subtle grace.

Our common thoughts to Heaven’s unknown,

We vibrate to the pant and thrill

And yearn to them with yearning fond;

Of His great beauty?—exaltations

And then, at moments, suddenly,

And we wrap round us for defence

Believed in, but not seen.