L'Envoi to 'Annie'

COURAGE, and face the strife of Humankind
In patience, O my brother:
We come from the eternal Night to find,
And not to lose, each other!
Think'st thou thy God hath toil'd thro* euuless Time
With ceaseless strong: endeavour,
To lashion these and thee from ooze and slime,
Then blot His work for ever?
Age after age hath roll'd in billowy s'rife
On the eternal Ocean,
Bearing us hither to these sands of Life
With sure and steadfast motion

Dead? Nought that lives can die. We live and see!
So hush thy foolish grieving:
This Universe was made that thoumightst be
Incarnate, self-perceiving.
Still thine own Soul, if thou wouldst still the strife
Of phantoms round thee flying;
Remember that the paradox ot Life
Is Death, the Life undying.
How? Thou be saved, and one of these be los
The least of these be spent, and thou soar free!
Nay! for these things are thou — these tempest-tost
Waves of the darkness are but forms of thee.

Shall these be cast away? Then rest them sure
No hopes abide for thee if none for these.
Wouldst thou be heal'd? Then hast thou these to cure;
Thine is their shame, their foulness, their disease.
By these, thy shadows, shalt thou rise or fall;
Thro' these, and thee, God reigns, or rests down-trod:
Let Him but lose but one, He loses all.
And losing all, He too is lost, ev'n God.
These shapes are only images of thee,
Nay, very God is thou and all things thine:
Thou art the Eye with which Eternity

Surveys itself, and knows itself Divine!