The Creed of My Heart

Aflame in my heart is kindled by the might of the morn's pure breath;
A passion beyond all passion; a faith that eclipses faith;
A joy that is more than gladness; a hope that outsoars desire;
A love that consumes and quickens; a soul-transfiguring fire.
My life is possessed and mastered: my heart is inspired and filled.
All other visions have faded: all other voices are stilled.
My doubts are vainer than shadows: my fears are idler than dreams:
They vanish like breaking bubbles, those old soul-torturing themes.
The riddles of life are cancelled, the problems that bred despair:
I cannot guess them or solve them, but I know that they are not there.
They are past, they are all forgotten, the breeze has blown them away;
For life's inscrutable meaning is clear as the dawn of day.
It is there — the secret of Nature — there in the morning's glow;
There in the speaking stillness; there in the rose-flushed snow.
It is here in the joy and rapture; here in my pulsing breast:
I feel what has ne'er been spoken: I know what has ne'er been guessed.
The rose-lit clouds of morning; the sun-kissed mountain heights;
The orient streaks and flushes; the mingling shadows and lights;
The flow of the lonely river; the voice of its distant stream;
The mists that rise from the meadows, lit up by the sun's first beam; —
They mingle and melt as I watch them; melt and mingle and die.
The land is one with the water: the earth is one with the sky.
The parts are as parts no longer: Nature is All and One:
Her life is achieved, completed: her days of waiting are done.
I breathe the breath of the morning. I am one with the one World-Soul.
I live my own life no longer, but the life of the living
Whole.
I am more than self: I am selfless: I am more than self: I am I.
I have found the springs of my being in the flush of the eastern sky.
I — the true self, the spirit, the self that is born of death —
I have found the flame of my being in the morn's ambrosial breath.
I lose my life for a season: I lose it beyond recall:
But I find it renewed, rekindled, in the life of the One, the All.
I look not forward or backward: the abysses of time are nought.
From pole to pole of the heavens I pass in a flash of thought.
I clasp the world to my bosom: I feel its pulse in my breast, —
The pulse of measureless motion, the pulse of fathomless rest.
Is it motion or rest that thrills me? Is it lightning or moonlit peace?
Am I freer than waves of ether, or prisoned beyond release?
I know not; but through my spirit, within me, around, above,
The world-wide river is streaming, the river of life and love.
Silent, serene, eternal, passionless, perfect, pure; —
I may not measure its windings, but I know that its aim is sure.
In its purity seethes all passion: in its silence resounds all song:
Its strength is builded of weakness: its right is woven of wrong.
I am borne afar on its bosom; yet its source and its goal are mine,
From the sacred springs of Creation to the ocean of love Divine.
I have ceased to think or to reason: there is nothing to ponder or prove:
I hope, I believe no longer; I am lost in a dream of love.