Classic Poem

O to be breathing and hearing and feeling and seeing!
O the ineffably glorious privilege of being!
All of the World's lovely girlhood, unfleshed and made spirit,
Broods out in the sunlight this morning — I see it, I hear it!

So read me no text, O my Brothers, and preach me no creeds;
I am busy beholding the glory of God in His deeds!
See! Everywhere buds coming out, blossoms flaming, bees humming!
Glad athletic growers up-reaching, things striving, becoming!

O, I know in my heart, in the sun-quickened, blossoming soul of me,
This something called self is a part, but the world is the whole of me!
I am one with these growers, these singers, these earnest becomers —
Co-heirs of the summer to be and past aeons of summers!

I kneel not nor grovel; no prayer with my lips shall I fashion.
Close-knit in the fabric of things, fused with one common passion —
To go on and become something greater — we growers are one;
None more in the world than a bird and none less than the sun;
But all woven into the glad indivisible Scheme,
God fashioning out in the Finite a part of His dream!

Out here where the world-love is flowing, unfettered, unpriced,
I feel all the depth of the man-soul and girl-heart of Christ!
'Mid this riot of pink and white flame in this miracle weather,
Soul to soul, merged in one, God and I dream the vast dream together.
We are one in the doing of things that are done and to be;
I am part of my God as a raindrop is part of the sea!

What! House me my God? Take me in where no blossoms are blowing?
Roof me in from the blue, wall me in from the green and the wonder of growing?
Parcel out what is already mine, like a vender of staples?
See! Yonder my God burns revealed in the sap-drunken maples!