I.
O Life! O Death! O God!
Have I not striven?
Have I not known thee, God,
As thy stars know Heaven?
Have I not held thee true,
True as thy deepest,
Sweet and immaculate blue,
Of nights that feel thy dew?
Have I not known thee true,
O God that keepest?
II.
O God, my father, God!
Didst give me fire
To rise above the clod,
And soar, aspire!
What tho' I strive and strive,
And all my life says live,
The sneerful scorn of men
But beats it down again;
And, O! sun-centered high,
O God! grand poet!
Beneath thy tender sky
Each day new Keatses die,
And thou dost know it!
III.
They know thee beautiful!
They know thee bitter!
And all their eyes are full,
O God! most beautiful!
Of tears that glitter.
Thou art above their tears;
Thou art beyond their years;
Thou sittest, God of Hosts,
Among thy glorious ghosts,
So high and holy;
And canst thou know the tears,
The strivings and the fears,
O God of godly peers!
Of such so lowly?
IV.
They who were fondly fain
To tell what mother pain
Of Nature makes the rain;
They who were glad to know
The sorrow of her snow,
Of her wild winds the woe;
The magic of her light,
The passion of her night,
And of her death the might;
They who had tears and sighs
For every bud that dies
While the dew on it lies;
They who had utterance for
Each warm, rose-hearted star
That stammers from afar;
The demon of vast seas,
The lips of lyric trees,
Lays of sonorous bees;
The fragrance-fays that dower
Each wildwood bosk and bower
With its faint musk of flower;
Of Time the feverish flight;
Earth, man, and, last, man's right
To thee, O Infinite!