Life grows not more nor less; it is but force
And only changes;
Expended here, it takes another course,
And ever ranges
Throughout this circling universe of ours,
Now quickening man, now in his grave-grown flowers.
Yet dwells life not alone in man and beast
And budding flowers.
It lurks in all things, from the very least
Gleam in dark bowers
Of the great sun, through stones, and sea, and air,
Up to ourselves, in Nature everywhere.
Life differs from the soul. This is beyond
The realms of science;
God and mankind it joins in closest bond,
And bids defiance
To Death and Change. By faith alone confessed,
It dwells within our bodies as a guest.
The germ of life sleeps in the aged hills
And stately rivets,
And wakes into the life our hearts that thrills
And in leaves quivers.
The universe is one great reservoir
From which man draws of thinking life his store.
And, therefore, is it that the weary brain,
That seeks communion
With Nature in her haunts, finds strength again
In that close union:
She is our mother and the mind distressed
Drinks a new draught of life at her loved breast.