The Kingdom of God

  '_In no Strange Land_'

  O world invisible, we view thee,

    O world intangible, we touch thee,

  O world unknowable, we know thee,

    Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

  Does the fish soar to find the ocean,

    The eagle plunge to find the air--

  That we ask of the stars in motion

    If they have rumour of thee there?

  Not where the wheeling systems darken,

    And our benumbed conceiving soars!--

  The drift of pinions, would we hearken,

    Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

  The angels keep their ancient places;--

    Turn but a stone, and start a wing!

  'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,

    That miss the many-splendoured thing.

  But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)

    Cry;--and upon thy so sore loss

  Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder

    Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

  Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,

    Cry,--clinging Heaven by the hems;

  And lo, Christ walking on the water

    Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!