December 23, 1879

A thousand houses of poesy stand around me everywhere;They fill the earth and they fill my thought, they are in and above theair;But to-night they have shut their doors, they have shut their shiningwindows fair,And I am left in a desert world, with an aching as if of care.

Cannot I break some little nut and get at the poetry in it?Cannot I break the shining egg of some all but hatched heavenly linnet?Cannot I find some beauty-worm, and its moony cocoon-silk spin it?Cannot I find my all but lost day in the rich content of a minute?

I will sit me down, all aching and tired, in the midst of thisnever-unclosingOf door or window that makes it look as if truth herself were dozing;I will sit me down and make me a tent, call it poetizing or prosing,Of what may be lying within my reach, things at my poor disposing!

Now what is nearest?--My conscious self. Here I sit quiet and say:"Lo, I myself am already a house of poetry solemn and gay!But, alas, the windows are shut, all shut: 'tis a cold and foggy day,And I have not now the light to see what is in me the same alway!"

Nay, rather I'll say: "I am a nut in the hard and frozen ground;Above is the damp and frozen air, the cold blue sky all round;And the power of a leafy and branchy tree is in me crushed and boundTill the summer come and set it free from the grave-clothesin which it is wound!"

But I bethink me of something better!--something better, yea best!"I am lying a voiceless, featherless thing in God's own perfect nest;And the voice and the song are growing within me, slowly lifting mybreast;And his wide night-wings are closed about me, for his sun is down in thewest!"

Doors and windows, tents and grave-clothes, winters and eggs and seeds,Ye shall all be opened and broken and torn; ye are but to serve my needs!On the will of the Father all lovely things are strung like a string ofbeadsFor his heart to give the obedient child that the will of the fatherheeds.