Stanzas

Often rebuked, yet always back returningTo those first feelings that were born with me,And leaving busy chase of wealth and learningFor idle dreams of things which cannot be:

To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;And visions rising, legion after legion,Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,And not in paths of high morality,And not among the half-distinguished faces,The clouded forms of long-past history.

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:It vexes me to choose another guide:Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.

What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?More glory and more grief than I can tell:The earth that wakes one human heart to feelingCan centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

No coward soul is mine,No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:I see Heaven's glories shine,And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast,Almighty, ever-present Deity!Life--that in me has rest,As I--undying Life--have power in thee!

Vain are the thousand creedsThat move men's hearts: unutterably vain;Worthless as withered weeds,Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in oneHolding so fast by thine infinity;So surely anchored onThe stedfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing loveThy spirit animates eternal years,Pervades and broods above,Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,And suns and universes ceased to be,And Thou were left alone,Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,Nor atom that his might could render void:Thou--THOU art Being and Breath,And what THOU art may never be destroyed.