To be alone wilt thou begin
When worlds of lovers hem thee in? 
To-morrow, when the masks shall fall
That dizen Nature’s carnival,
The pure shall see by their own will,
Which overflowing Love shall fill,
’T is not within the force of fate
The fate-conjoined to separate. 
But thou, my votary, weepest thou? 
I gave thee sight—­where is it now? 
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, bible, or of speech;
Wrote in thy mind’s transparent table,
As far as the incommunicable;
Taught thee each private sign to raise
Lit by the supersolar blaze. 
Past utterance, and past belief,
And past the blasphemy of grief,
The mysteries of Nature’s heart;
And though no Muse can these impart,
Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.

’I came to thee as to a friend;
Dearest, to thee I did not send
Tutors, but a joyful eye,
Innocence that matched the sky,
Lovely locks, a form of wonder,
Laughter rich as woodland thunder,
That thou might’st entertain apart
The richest flowering of all art: 
And, as the great all-loving Day
Through smallest chambers takes its way,
That thou might’st break thy daily bread
With prophet, savior and head;
That thou might’st cherish for thine own
The riches of sweet Mary’s Son,
Boy-Rabbi, Israel’s paragon. 
And thoughtest thou such guest
Would in thy hall take up his rest? 
Would rushing life forget her laws,
Fate’s glowing revolution pause? 
High omens ask diviner guess;
Not to be conned to tediousness
And know my higher gifts unbind
The zone that girds the incarnate mind. 
When the scanty shores are full
With Thought’s perilous, whirling pool;
When frail Nature can no more,
Then the Spirit strikes the hour: 
My servant Death, with solving rite,
Pours finite into infinite. 
Wilt thou freeze love’s tidal flow,
Whose streams through Nature circling go? 
Nail the wild star to its track
On the half-climbed zodiac? 
Light is light which radiates,
Blood is blood which circulates,
Life is life which generates,
And many-seeming life is one,—­
Wilt thou transfix and make it none? 
Its onward force too starkly pent
In figure, bone and lineament? 
Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate,
Talker! the unreplying Fate? 
Nor see the genius of the whole
Ascendant in the private soul,
Beckon it when to go and come,
Self-announced its hour of doom? 
Fair the soul’s recess and shrine,
Magic-built to last a season;
Masterpiece of love benign,
Fairer that expansive reason
Whose omen ’tis, and sign. 
Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know
What rainbows teach, and sunsets show? 
Verdict which accumulates
From lengthening scroll of human fates,
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of saints that inly burned,—­