utterance
Of Love; but how should earthly measure mete
The heavenly unmeasured or unlimited Love,
Which scarce can tune his high majestic sense
Unto the thunder-song that wheels the spheres;
Scarce living in the Aeolian harmony,
And flowing odour of the spacious air;
Scarce housed in the circle of this earth:
Be cabin'd up in words and syllables,
Which waste with the breath that made 'em.
Sooner earth
Might go round heaven, and the straight girth of Time
Inswathe the fullness of Eternity,
Than language grasp the infinite of Love.
O day, which did enwomb that happy hour,
Thou art blest in the years, divinest day!
O Genius of that hour which dost uphold
Thy coronal of glory like a God,
Amid thy melancholy mates far-seen,
Who walk before thee, and whose eyes are dim
With gazing on the light and depth of thine
Thy name is ever worshipp'd among hours!
Had I died then, I had not seem'd to die
For bliss stood round me like the lights of heaven,
That cannot fade, they are so burning bright.
Had I died then, I had not known the death;
Planting my feet against this mound of time
I had thrown me on the vast, and from this impulse
Continuing and gathering ever, ever,
Agglomerated swiftness, I had lived
That intense moment thro' eternity.
Oh, had the Power from whose right hand the light
Of Life issueth, and from whose left hand floweth
The shadow of Death, perennial effluences,
Whereof to all that draw the wholesome air,
Somewhile the one must overflow the other;
Then had he stemm'd my day with night and driven
My current to the fountain whence it sprang--
Even his own abiding excellence--
On me, methinks, that shock of gloom had fall'n
Unfelt, and like the sun I gazed upon,
Which, lapt in seeming dissolution,
And dipping his head low beneath the verge,
Yet bearing round about him his own day,
In confidence of unabated strength,
Steppeth from heaven to heaven, from light to light,
And holding his undimmed forehead far
Into a clearer zenith, pure of cloud;
So bearing on thro' Being limitless
The triumph of this foretaste, I had merged
Glory in glory, without sense of change.

We trod the shadow of the downward hill;
We pass'd from light to dark. On the other side
Is scooped a cavern and a mountain-hall,
Which none have fathom'd. If you go far in
(The country people rumour) you may h