All Flesh

  I do not need the skies'

  Pomp, when I would be wise;

  For pleasaunce nor to use

  Heaven's champaign when I muse.

  One grass-blade in its veins

  Wisdom's whole flood contains;

  Thereon my foundering mind

  Odyssean fate can find.

  O little blade, now vaunt

  Thee, and be arrogant!

  Tell the proud sun that he

  Sweated in shaping thee;

  Night, that she did unvest

  Her mooned and argent breast

  To suckle thee.  Heaven fain

  Yearned over thee in rain,

  And with wide parent wing

  Shadowed thee, nested thing,

  Fed thee, and slaved for thy

  Impotent tyranny.

  Nature's broad thews bent

  Meek for thy content.

  Mastering littleness

  Which the wise heavens confess,

  The frailty which doth draw

  Magnipotence to its law--

  These were, O happy one, these

  Thy laughing puissances!

  Be confident of thought,

  Seeing that thou art naught;

  And be thy pride thou'rt all

  Delectably safe and small.

  Epitomized in thee

  Was the mystery

  Which shakes the spheres conjoint--

  God focussed to a point.

  All thy fine mouths shout

  Scorn upon dull-eyed doubt.

  Impenetrable fool

  Is he thou canst not school

  To the humility

  By which the angels see!

  Unfathomably framed

  Sister, I am not shamed

  Before the cherubin

  To vaunt my flesh thy kin.

  My one hand thine, and one

  Imprisoned in God's own,

  I am as God; alas,

  And such a god of grass!

  A little root clay-caught,

  A wind, a flame, a thought,

  Inestimably naught!