Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/495

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shadows grow and deepen round me,
 * I feel the dew-fall in the air;

The muezzin of the darkening thicket,
 * I hear the night-thrush call to prayer.

The evening wind is sad with farewells,
 * And loving hands unclasp from mine;

Alone I go to meet the darkness
 * Across an awful boundary-line.

As from the lighted hearths behind me
 * I pass with slow, reluctant feet,

What waits me in the land of strangeness?
 * What face shall smile, what voice shall greet?

What space shall awe, what brightness blind me?
 * What thunder-roll of music stun?

What vast processions sweep before me
 * Of shapes unknown beneath the sun?

I shrink from unaccustomed glory,
 * I dread the myriad-voicëd strain;

Give me the unforgotten faces,
 * And let my lost ones speak again.

He will not chide my mortal yearning
 * Who is our Brother and our Friend;

In whose full life, divine and human,
 * The heavenly and the earthly blend.

Mine be the joy of soul-communion,
 * The sense of spiritual strength renewed,

The reverence for the pure and holy,
 * The dear delight of doing good.

No fitting ear is mine to listen
 * An endless anthem’s rise and fall;

No curious eye is mine to measure
 * The pearl gate and the jasper wall.

For love must needs be more than knowledge:
 * What matter if I never know

Why Aldebaran’s star is ruddy,
 * Or warmer Sirius white as snow!

Forgive my human words, O Father!
 * I go Thy larger truth to prove;