All forms of all faces,

All works of all hands
In unsearchable places

Of time-stricken lands,

All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands.

Though sore be my burden
And more than ye know,
And my growth have no guerdon
But only to grow,

Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or deathworms below.

These too have their part in me,

As I too in these ;

Such fire is at heart in me,

Such sap is this tree's,

Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and of seas.

In the spring-color'd hours
When my mind was as May's,
There brake forth of me flowers
By centuries of days,

Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as

rays.

And the sound of them springing
And smell of their shoots

Were as warmth and sweet singing
And strength to my roots;

And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits.

I bid you but be;

I have need not of prayer;

I have need of you free

As your mouths of mine air;

That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me fair.

More fair than strange fruit is
Of faith ye espouse;

In me only the root is

That blooms in your boughs;

Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your vows.

In the darkening and whitening
Abysses ador'd,

With dayspring and lightning

For lamp and for sword, God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the wrath of the Lord.

The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.

Not a flower to be press'd of the foot that falls not;

As the heart of a dead man the seedplots are dry;

From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,

Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.

Over the meadows that blossom and wither
Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song;
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long.

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.

Only the wind here hovers and revels
In a round where life seems barren as

shaken,

These remain.

them Or the wave.