Life

I feel the great immensity of life. All little aims slip from me, and I reach My yearning soul toward the Infinite.

As when a mighty forest, whose green leaves Have shut it in, and made it seem a bower For lovers’ secrets, or for children’s sports, Casts all its clustering foliage to the winds, And lets the eye behold it, limitless, And full of winding mysteries of ways: So now with life that reaches out before, And borders on the unexplained Beyond.

I see the stars above me, world on world: I hear the awful language of all Space; I feel the distant surging of great seas, That hide the secrets of the Universe In their eternal bosoms; and I know That I am but an atom of the Whole.