Human Life’s Mystery

7The senses folding thick and dark

8About the stifled soul within,

9We guess diviner things beyond,

10And yearn to them with yearning fond;

11We strike out blindly to a mark

12Believed in, but not seen.

13We vibrate to the pant and thrill

14Wherewith Eternity has curled

15In serpent-twine about God’s seat;

16While, freshening upward to His feet,

17In gradual growth His full-leaved will

18Expands from world to world.

19And, in the tumult and excess

20Of act and passion under sun,

21We sometimes hear—oh, soft and far,

22As silver star did touch with star,

23The kiss of Peace and Righteousness

24Through all things that are done.

25God keeps His holy mysteries

26Just on the outside of man’s dream;

27In diapason slow, we think

28To hear their pinions rise and sink,

29While they float pure beneath His eyes,

30Like swans adown a stream.

31Abstractions, are they, from the forms

32Of His great beauty?—exaltations

33From His great glory?—strong previsions

34Of what we shall be?—intuitions

35Of what we are—in calms and storms,

36Beyond our peace and passions?

37Things nameless! which, in passing so,

38Do stroke us with a subtle grace.

39We say, ‘Who passes?’—they are dumb.

40We cannot see them go or come:

41Their touches fall soft, cold, as snow

42Upon a blind man’s face.

43Yet, touching so, they draw above

44Our common thoughts to Heaven’s unknown,

45Our daily joy and pain advance

46To a divine significance,

47Our human love—O mortal love,

48That light is not its own!

49And sometimes horror chills our blood

50To be so near such mystic Things,

51And we wrap round us for defence

52Our purple manners, moods of sense—

53As angels from the face of God

54Stand hidden in their wings.

55And sometimes through life’s heavy swound

56We grope for them!—with strangled breath

57We stretch our hands abroad and try

58To reach them in our agony,—

59And widen, so, the broad life-wound

60Which soon is large enough for death.