University of Virginia Library

THE PANTHEIST.

Creation steps from pose to pose,
There was a thistle—is a rose,
But not commencement, not a close.
No separate life has ever stood,
The stone is beautiful and good,
And heaven is all in womanhood.
I see the whole of Nature's spell,
Hid in the shaping of a shell—
The colour of a blossom's bell.
Nor could I for a moment live,
Did not the Maker freely give
To all His full prerogative.
He is as much in every drop
Of dew that bends the spicule prop,
As in the mighty mountain top.
I feel Him in the thronèd thought,
No less than in the Empire wrought
Through strife across the ages fought.
I know the total sum of things
Is everywhere, in insect wings,
And faintest air of golden strings.
I find the glamour of the globe
In violet's breath, the surgeon's probe,
The rustling of a maiden's robe;
And in the second that goes by,
With but a new-born baby's cry,
The passion of Eternity.
While I am in each humblest part
And one with Nature and with Art,
The Universe is in my heart.
And I am God and God is I,
For ever far, for ever nigh,
Within the sun, within the sigh.
The earth is but the shifting dress,
Through pain and joy's more sad caress,
Of the Eternal Loveliness.
And nought there is that cannot say,
While life and death together play,
“Behold, I sup with God to-day.”
He is the star, the crumbling clod,
The beggar's crutch, the prophet's rod,
And all in all and always God.