sit o'ercanopied with Beauty's tent,
Through which flies many a golden-winged dove,
Well watched of Fancy's tender eyes up bent;
A hundred Powers wait on me, ministering;
A thousand treasures Art and Knowledge bring;
Will, Conscience, Reason tower the rest above;
But in the midst, alone, I gladness am and love.
30.
'Tis but a vision, Lord; I do not mean
That thus I am, or have one moment been--
'Tis but a picture hung upon my wall,
To measure dull contentment therewithal,
And know behind the human how I fall;--
A vision true, of what one day shall be,
When thou hast had thy very will with me.
JULY.
1.
ALAS, my tent! see through it a whirlwind sweep!
Moaning, poor Fancy's doves are swept away.
I sit alone, a sorrow half asleep,
My consciousness the blackness all astir.
No pilgrim I, a homeless wanderer--
For how canst Thou be in the darkness deep,
Who dwellest only in the living day?
2.
It must be, somewhere in my fluttering tent,
Strange creatures, half tamed only yet, are pent--
Dragons, lop-winged birds, and large-eyed snakes!
Hark! through the storm the saddest howling breaks!
Or are they loose, roaming about the bent,
The darkness dire deepening with moan and scream?--
My Morning, rise, and all shall be a dream.
3.
Not thine, my Lord, the darkness all is mine--
Save that, as mine, my darkness too is thine:
All things are thine to save or to destroy--
Destroy my darkness, rise my perfect joy;
Love primal, the live coal of every night,
Flame out, scare the ill things with radiant fright,
And fill my tent with laughing morn's delight.
4.
Master, thou workest with such common things--
Low souls, weak hearts, I mean--and hast to use,
Therefore, such common means and rescuings,
That hard we find it, as we sit and muse,
To think thou workest in us verily:
Bad sea-boats we, and manned with wretched crews--
That doubt the captain, watch the storm-spray flee.
5.
Thou art hampered in thy natural working then
When beings designed on freedom's holy plan
Will not be free: with thy poor, foolish men,
Thou therefore hast to work just like a man.
But when, tangling thyself in their sore need,
Thou hast to freedom fashione
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