Now the long shadows eastward creep,
The golden sun is setting;
Take, Lord! the worship of our sleep,
The praise of our forgetting.
"DAY UNTO DAY UTTERETH SPEECH"
The speech that day doth utter, and the night,
Full oft to mortal ears it hath no sound;
Dull are our eyes to read upon the ground
What's written there; and stars are hid by light.
So when the dark doth fall, awhile our sight
Kens the unwonted orbs that circle round,
Then quick in sleep our human sense is bound—
Speechless for us the starry heavens and bright.
But when the day doth close there is one word
That's writ amid the sunset's golden embers;
And one at morn; by them our hearts are stirred:
Splendor of Dawn, and Evening that remembers;
These are the rhymes of God; thus, line on line,
Our souls are moved to thoughts that are divine.
PART IV
THE SOUL
Three messengers to me from heaven came
And said: "There is a deathless human soul;
It is not lost, as is the fiery flame
That dies into the undistinguished whole.
Ah, no; it separate is, distinct as God—
Nor any more than He can it be killed;
Then fearless give thy body to the clod,
For naught can quench the light that once it filled!"
