A NEW ORPHIC HYMN
by: Sir Lewis Morris (1833-1907)
- HE PEAKS, and the starlit skies,
the deeps of the fathomless seas,
Immanent is He in all, yet higher and deeper than these.
-
- The heart, and the mind, and the soul, the thoughts and the
yearnings of Man,
- Of His essence are one and all, and yet define it who can?
-
- The love of the Right, tho cast down, the hate of victorious
Ill,
- All are sparks from the central fire of a boundless beneficent
Will.
-
- Oh, mystical secrets of Nature, great Universe undefined,
- Ye are part of the infinite work of a mighty ineffable Mind.
-
- Beyond your limitless Space, before your measureless Time,
- Ere Life or Death began was this changeless Essence sublime.
-
- In the core of eternal calm He dwelleth unmoved and alone
- Mid the Universe He has made, as a monarch upon his
throne.
-
- And the self-same inscrutable Power which fashioned the sun
and the star
- Is Lord of the feeble strength of the humblest creatures
that are.
-
- The weak things that float or creep for their little life
of a day,
- The weak souls that falter and faint, as feeble and futile
as they;
-
- The malefic invisible atoms unmarked by mans purblind
eye
- That beleaguer our House of Life, and compass us till we
die;
-
- All these are parts of Him, the indivisible One,
- Who supports and illumines the many, Creations Pillar
and Sun!
-
- Yea, and far in the depths of Being, too dark for a mortal
brain,
- Lurk His secrets of Evil and Wrong, His creatures of Death
and of Pain.
-
- A viewless Necessity binds, a determinate Impetus drives
- To a hidden invisible goal the freightage of numberless lives.
-
- The waste, and the pain, and the wrong, the abysmal mysteries
dim,
- Come not of themselves alone, but are seed and issue of Him.
-
- And Mans spirit that spends and is spent in mystical
questionings,
- Oh, the depths of the fathomless deep, oh, the riddle and
secret of things,
- And the voice through the darkness heard, and the rush of
winnowing wings!
"A New Orphic Hymn" is
reprinted from The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse.
Ed. Nicholson & Lee. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917. |
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POEMS BY SIR LEWIS MORRIS |
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