Life and Existence

I found Him in the shining of the stars, I mark’d Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not.

 

For man is man and master of his fate.

 

Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King— Else, wherefore born?

 

Man’s word is God in man.

 

Ah Christ, that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.

 

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapors weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan.

 

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapors weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan.

 

She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.

 

And ah for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be!

 

And ah for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be!

 

For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.

 

For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.

 

Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.

 

Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of death Rode the six hundred.

 

Speak no more of his renown. Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him. God accept him, Christ receive him.

 

O iron nerve to true occasion true, O fall’n at length, that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.

 

The last great Englishman is low.

 

Bury the Great Duke With an empire’s lamentation.

 

One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves.

 

One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves.

 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.

 

So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be.

 

The great world’s altar-stairs, That slope through darkness up to God.

 

But what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.