Soul

And now good morrow to our waking souls,

Air and angels.

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,

A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

This life’s dim windows of the soul

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still voice of conscience.

A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary.

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.

Light breaks where no sun shines; Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart Push in their tides.

I wish to make a noise with my feet. I want my soul to find its proper body.

Icebergs behoove the soul (both being self-made from elements least visible) to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected, indivisible.

The soul has many motions, body one.

My secrets cry aloud. I have no need for tongue. My heart keeps open house, My doors are widely flung.

One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved.

Rest at pale evening… A tall slim tree… Night coming tenderly Black like me.

I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

The world stands out on either side No wider than the heart is wide; Above the world is stretched the sky,— No higher than the soul is high. The heart can push the sea and land Farther away on either hand; The soul can split the sky in two, And let the face of God shine through. But East and West will pinch the heart That can not keep them pushed apart; And he whose soul is flat—the sky Will cave in on him by and by.

And we all go with them, into the silent funeral, Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury. I said to my soul, be still, 8 and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God.

The palm at the end of the mind, Beyond the last thought, rises… A gold-feathered bird Sings in the palm.

She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the self-same sounds On my spirit make a music, too.

Out of me unworthy and unknown The vibrations of deathless music.