THE PADDOCK
—Yea, though root and leaf decay,
Still incessant, night and day,
Through my lowly passage-way,
Do Divine Transactions run,
And Deathless Deeds are done.
Plann’d thus, provided,
Given and guided,
My little measure of measureless might
(By the Great Hands that made,
Mightily wielded)
Service hath yielded
Infinitesimal, infinite,
And Life, the Everlasting Tree,
Hath lived by me.
From my weak substance, through my narrow
veins,
Her ever-breathing effluence hath been shed,
Her speeding sap been sped,
Her fresh springs fed.
Now brings she, to enlarge my labouring breath,
And set my cramp’d force free,
No stranger, but a life-long friend to me,
And her chief handmaid—Death!
Ay, be it still as it was of old!—
For the husk split, that the seed might sprout,
The burst bud let the flower out,
And the flower fell, that the fruit might swell.
Further, further, let me unfold—
Out of the tree, into the mould!
Growing, growing, let me grow on—
Out of tissue to Soil and Sun!
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