JULY.
1.
ALAS, my tent! see through it a whirlwind sweep!
Moaning, poor Fancy's doves are swept away.
I sit alone, a sorrow half asleep,
My consciousness the blackness all astir.
No pilgrim I, a homeless wanderer--
For how canst Thou be in the darkness deep,
Who dwellest only in the living day?
2.
It must be, somewhere in my fluttering tent,
Strange creatures, half tamed only yet, are pent--
Dragons, lop-winged birds, and large-eyed snakes!
Hark! through the storm the saddest howling breaks!
Or are they loose, roaming about the bent,
The darkness dire deepening with moan and scream?--
My Morning, rise, and all shall be a dream.
3.
Not thine, my Lord, the darkness all is mine--
Save that, as mine, my darkness too is thine:
All things are thine to save or to destroy--
Destroy my darkness, rise my perfect joy;
Love primal, the live coal of every night,
Flame out, scare the ill things with radiant fright,
And fill my tent with laughing morn's delight.
4.
Master, thou workest with such common things--
Low souls, weak hearts, I mean--and hast to use,
Therefore, such common means and rescuings,
That hard we find it, as we sit and muse,
To think thou workest in us verily:
Bad sea-boats we, and manned with wretched crews--
That doubt the captain, watch the storm-spray flee.
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