UNTO Thee, O Nature, I abandon myself: Accept me, thou beautiful, Marred and deformed and stunted take me from myself Unto thy own great uses. Lo, I outgrow this body! painfully My life ebbs yet and flows again within it. These hands and feet, these eyes and brain, these senses, faculties, have served their turn— The dinted tools I render back to Thee. As when a boy I sat upon the beach in the sun, and watched the sparkling waves, So now in extreme age sitting here I trace no change—scarce any change at all. Some little work done, some formal knowledge gained, some passages of sweet or sad experience; But all these only outworks, falling off, Leave me the same that I have been through life. (So little one life—so brief, slight, a thing.) Till now at length, feeling Thee gather round me close, Close, closer, closer yet, At last the bounds dissolve which kept us twain, And I and Thou are one, and I alone am not. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE WAVES OF BREFFNY by EVA GORE-BOOTH ANSWER TO MASTER WITHER'S SONG, 'SHALL I, WASTING IN DESPAIR?' by BEN JONSON HARLEM SHADOWS by CLAUDE MCKAY GREEK ARCHITECTURE by HERMAN MELVILLE HISTORY OF A LIFE by BRYAN WALLER PROCTER SONNET: 67 by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE |