To The Heavenly Power

When this burning flesh     Burns down in Time's slow fire to a glowing ash;     When these lips have uttered     The last word, and the ears' last echoes fluttered;     And crumbled these firm bones     As in the chemic air soft blackened stones;     When all that was mortal made     Owns its mortality, proud yet afraid;     Then when I stumble in     The broad light, from this twilight weak and thin,     What of me will change,     What of that brightness will be new and strange?     Shall I indeed endure     New solitude in that high air and pure,     Aching for these fingers     On which my assurd hand now shuts and lingers?     Now when I look back     On manhood's and on childhood's far-stretched track,     I see but a little child     In a green sunny world-home; there enisled     By another, cloudy world     Of unsailed waters all around him curled,     And he at home content     With the small sky of wonders over him bent:--     Lonely, yet not alone     Since all was friendly being all unknown;     To-day yesterday forgetting,     And never with to-morrow's sorrow fretting;     Not seeing good from ill     Since but to breathe and run and sleep was well;     Asking nor fearing nought     Since the body's nerves and veins held all his thought....     Such a child again shall I     Stray in some valley of infinity,     Where infinite finite seems     And nothing more immortal than my dreams?     Where earthly seasons play     Still with their snows and blossoms and night and day,     And no unsetting sun     Brightens the white cloud and awakes the moon?     In such half-life's half-light     To cloak with mortal an immortal sight?     With uninformed desire,     Shorn passion, gentle mind, contented fire,     Ignorant love; to run     But with the little journeys of the sun,     And at evening sleep     With birds and beasts, and stars rocked in the deep?     But maybe this man's mind     Will leave not its maturity behind,     And nothing will forget     Of all that teased or eased it here, while yet     A mortal dress it wore;     And these quick-darting thoughts and probings sore     More sharply then will turn;     And lonelier and yet hungrier the heart burn.     O, I would not forget     Earth is too rich, too dark, too sour, too sweet:--     Nor be divorcd quite     From the late tingling of the nerves' delight.     Less I would never be     Than the deep-graving years have made of me--     A memory, pulse, mind,     Seed and harvest, a reaper and sower blind.     I shall no more be I     If I forget the world's joy and agony;     If I forget how strong     Is the assault of scarce-rebukd wrong.     I shall no more be I     If my ears hear not earth's embittered cry     Perpetual; and forget     The unrighteous shackles on man's ankle set;     If no more my heart beat     Quicker because on earth is something sweet;     I shall no more be I     If the ancestral voices no more sigh     Familiar in my brain,     And leave me to cold silence and its pain,     And the bewildered stare     On an unhomely land in biting air:     If the blood no more vex     The heart with the importunities of sex,     If indeed marriage bind     No more body to body, mind to mind,     And love be powerless, cold,     That once by love's strength only was controlled,     And that chief spiritual force     Be dam'd back and stretch frozen to its source....     To the Heavenly Power I cry,     Foiled by these dreams of immortality,     "Let all be as Thou wilt,     And the foundations in Thy dark mind built;     Even infinity     Be but imagination's dream of Thee;     And let thought still, still     Vainly its waves on night's cliff break and spill.     "But, Heavenly Power," I'd cry,     Knowing how, near or far, He still is nigh,     "When this burning flesh     Is burnt away to a little driven ash,     What thing soever shall rise     From that cold ash unseen to unseen skies,     Grant that so much of me     Shall rise as may remember Thy world, and Thee."