neglect
anything to do it--which is what we do--and He is going to do it
anyway.

I have refused to take time from my infinity now for a theory of a
theory about some new kind by and by. I have but to stand perfectly
still. There is an infinite opening and shutting of doors for me,
through all the heavens and the earth. I lie with my head in the deep
grass. A square yard is forever across. I listen to a great city in
the grass--millions of insects. Microscopes have threaded it for me. I
know their city--all its mighty little highways. I possess it. And
when I walk away I rebuild their city softly in my heart. Winds,
tides, and vapors are for me everywhere, that my soul may possess
them. I reach down to the silent metals under my feet that millions of
ages have worked on, and fire and wonder and darkness. I feel the sun
and the lives of nations flowing around to me, from under the sea. Who
can shut me out from anybody's sunrise?

"Oh, tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire;
One morn is in the mighty heaven
And one in my desire."

I play with the Seasons, with all the weathers on earth. I can
telegraph for them. I go to the weather I want. The sky--to me--is no
longer a great, serious, foreign-looking shore, conducting a big
foolish cloud-business, sending down decrees of weather on helpless
cities. With a whistle and a roar I defy it--move any strip of it out
from over me--for any other strip. I order the time of year. It is my
sky. I bend it a little--just a little. The sky no longer has a
monopoly of wonder. With the hands of my hands, my brother and I have
made an earth that can answer a sky back, that can commune with a sky.
The soul at last guesses at its real self. It reaches out and dares.
Men go about singing with telescopes. I do not always need to lift my
hands to a sky and pray to it now. I am related to it. With the hands
of my hands I work with it. I say "I and the sky." I say "I and the
Earth." We are immortal because we are infinite. We have reached over
with the hands of our hands. They are praying a stupendous prayer--a
kind of god's prayer. God's hand has been grasped--vaguely--wonderfully
out in the Dark. No longer is the joy of the universe to a man, one of
his great, solemn, solitary joys. The sublime itself is a neighborly
thought. God's machine--up--There--and the machines of the man have
signaled each other.

V

THE IDEA OF GOD

My study (not the place wh