O Life! O Death! O God! Have I not striven? Have I not known thee, God, As thy stars know Heaven?
Have I not held thee true, True as thy deepest, Sweet and immaculate blue, Of nights that feel thy dew?
Have I not known thee true, O God that keepest? O God, my father, God! Didst give me fire
To rise above the clod, And soar, aspire! What tho’ I strive and strive, And all my life says live,
The sneerful scorn of men But beats it down again; And, O! sun-centered high, O God! grand poet!
Beneath thy tender sky Each day new Keatses die, And thou dost know it! They know thee beautiful!
They know thee bitter! And all their eyes are full, O God! most beautiful! Of tears that glitter.
Thou art above their tears; Thou art beyond their years; Thou sittest, God of Hosts, Among thy glorious ghosts,
So high and holy; And canst thou know the tears, The strivings and the fears, O God of godly peers!
Of such so lowly? They who were fondly fain To tell what mother pain Of Nature makes the rain;
They who were glad to know The sorrow of her snow, Of her wild winds the woe; The magic of her light,
The passion of her night, And of her death the might; They who had tears and sighs For every bud that dies
While the dew on it lies; They who had utterance for Each warm, rose-hearted star That stammers from afar;
The demon of vast seas, The lips of lyric trees, Lays of sonorous bees; The fragrance-fays that dower
Each wildwood bosk and bower With its faint musk of flower; Of Time the feverish flight; Earth, man, and, last, man's right
To thee, O Infinite!
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