Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE INVISIBLE, by EDWARD ROWLAND SILL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE INVISIBLE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: If there is naught but what we see
Last Line: I know he lives and cares for me.
Alternate Author Name(s): Hedbrooke, Andrew
Subject(s): Religion; Theology


IF there is naught but what we see,
What is the wide world worth to me?
But is there naught save what we see?
A thousand things on every hand
My sense is numb to understand:
I know we eddy round the sun;
When has it dizzied any one?
I know the round worlds draw from far,
Through hollow systems, star to star;
But who has e'er upon a strand
Of those great cables laid his hand?
What reaches up from room to room
Of chambered earth, through glare or gloom,
Through molten flood and fiery blast,
And binds our hurrying feet so fast?
'T is the earth-mother's love, that well
Will hold the motes that round her dwell:
Through granite hills you feel it stir
As lightly as through gossamer:
Its grasp unseen by mortal eyes,
Its grain no lens can analyze.

If there is naught but what we see,
The friend I loved is lost to me:
He fell asleep; who dares to say
His spirit is so far away?
Who knows what wings are round about?
These thoughts -- who proves but from without
They still are whispered? Who can think
They rise from morning's food and drink!
These thoughts that stream on like the sea,
And darkly beat incessantly
The feet of some great hope, and break,
And only broken glimmers make,
Nor ever climb the shore, to lie
And calmly mirror the far sky,
And image forth in tranquil deeps
The secret that its silence keeps.

Because he never comes, and stands
And stretches out to me both hands,
Because he never leans before
The gate, when I set wide the door
At morning, nor is ever found
Just at my side when I turn round,
Half thinking I shall meet his eyes,
From watching the broad moon-globe rise, --
For all this, shall I homage pay
To Death, grow cold of heart, and say,
"He perished, and has ceased to be;
Another comes, but never he"?
Nay, by our wondrous being, nay!
Although his face I never see
Through all the infinite To Be,
I know he lives and cares for me.





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