Immutable

AUTUMN to winter, winter into spring,

Spring into summer, summer into fall,--

So rolls the changing year, and so we change;

Motion so swift, we know not that we move.

Till at the gate of some memorial hour

We pause--look in its sepulchre to find

The cast-off shape that years since we called "I"--

And start, amazed. Yet on! We may not stay

To weep or laugh. All which is past, is past

Even while we gaze the simulated form

Drops into dust, like many-centuried corpse

At opening of a tomb.

Alack, this world

Is full of change, change, change,--nothing but change!

Is there not one straw in life's whirling flood

To hold by, as the torrent sweeps us down,

Us, scattered leaves; eddied and broken; torn

Roughly asunder; or in smooth mid-stream

Divided each from other without pain;

Collected in what looks like union,

Yet is but stagnant chance,--stopping to rot

By the same pebble till the tide shall turn;

Then on, to find no shelter and no rest,

Forever rootless and forever lone.

O God, we are but leaves upon Thy stream,

Clouds on Thy sky. We do but move across

The silent breast of Thy infinitude

Which bears us all. We pour out day by day

Our long, brief moan of mutability

To Thine immutable--and cease.

Yet still

Our change yearns after Thine unchangedness;

Our mortal craves Thine immortality;

Our manifold and multiform and weak

Imperfectness, requires the perfect ONE.

For Thou art ONE, and we are all of Thee;

Dropped from Thy bosom, as Thy sky drops down

Its morning dews, which glitter for a space,

Uncertain whence they fell, or whither tend,

Till the great Sun arising on his fields

Upcalls them all, and they rejoicing go.

So, with like joy, O Light Eterne, we spring

Thee-ward, and leave the pleasant fields of earth,

Forgetting equally its blossomed green

And its dry dusty paths which drank us up

Remorseless,--we, poor humble drops of dew,

That only wish to freshen a flower's breast,

And be exhaled to heaven.

O Thou supreme

All-satisfying and immutable One,

It is enough to be absorbed in Thee

And vanish,--though 't were only to a voice

That through all ages with perpetual joy

Goes evermore loud crying, "God! God! God!"