New Zealand Verse/Quot Oculi Tot Mundi
CXXIX.
Quot Oculi Tot Mundi.
The world is as the sense that makes it known:
To eyeless creatures, dark eternally;
To others, dim, in mazy depths of sea,
Beyond the sound of all its surface moan;
Narrow to some, as insects ’neath a stone,
Or in a tiny crevice, or a bee
That murmurs in a flower; but the free,
Heav’n-soaring birds a wider vision own.
And though our eyes can boast no eagle sweep,
To us is given the larger range of thought,
Wherewith we pierce the starry depths, o’erleap
The bounds of sense, and see in all things wrought
Signs of deep mysteries, which angel eyes
May see, or ours, perchance, in paradise.
To eyeless creatures, dark eternally;
To others, dim, in mazy depths of sea,
Beyond the sound of all its surface moan;
Narrow to some, as insects ’neath a stone,
Or in a tiny crevice, or a bee
That murmurs in a flower; but the free,
Heav’n-soaring birds a wider vision own.
And though our eyes can boast no eagle sweep,
To us is given the larger range of thought,
Wherewith we pierce the starry depths, o’erleap
The bounds of sense, and see in all things wrought
Signs of deep mysteries, which angel eyes
May see, or ours, perchance, in paradise.