Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, VACATION, by SAMUEL VALENTINE COLE


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

VACATION, by                    
First Line: The spirit of life has wrought upon the world
Last Line: In whom we live, and move, and have our being.
Subject(s): Life; Nature


THE spirit of Life has wrought upon the world
The old-time miracle; none knoweth how:
Green fields, the banners of the wood unfurled,
The flash of wings across the smiling moors,
The piled-up cumuli where heaven soars
All beautiful ever:—it is summer now,
And I am free in God's great out-of-doors!

In the warm grasses as one lies alone,
And hears the message which the low wind brings—
Unsyllabled, indeed, but not unknown—
His very being seems to ebb and spend,
And somehow in the great world-rhythm blend,—
Those deep pulsations from the heart of things
That throb, and throb, and throb, and make no end.

All things are mine; to all things I belong;
I mingle in them—heeding bounds nor bars—
Float in the cloud, melt in the river's song;
In the clear wave from rock to rock I leap,
Widen away, and slowly onward creep;
I stretch forth glimmering hands beneath the stars,
And lose my little murmur in the deep.

Yea, more than that; whatever I behold—
Dark forest, mountain, the o'erarching wheel
Of heaven's solemn turning, all the old
Immeasurable air and boundless sea—
Yields of its life, builds life and strength in me
For tasks to come, while I but see and feel,
And merely am, and it is joy to be.

For that small spark within us is not blind
To its beginning; struck from one vast Soul
Which, in the frame-work of the world, doth bind
All parts together; small, but still agreeing
With That which moulded us without our seeing:
Since God is all, and all in all—the Whole,
In whom we live, and move, and have our being.





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