For I must sing of all I feel and know, <br />Waiting with Memnon passive near the palms, <br />Until the heavenly light doth dawn and grow <br />And thrill my silence into mystic psalms; <br />From unknown realms the wind streams sad or gay, <br />The trees give voice responsive to its sway. <br /> <br />For I must sing: of mountains, deserts, seas, <br />Of rivers ever flowing, ever flowing; <br />Of beasts and birds, of grass and flowers and trees <br />Forever fading and forever growing; <br />Of calm and storm, of night and eve and noon, <br />Of boundless space, and sun and stars and moon; <br /> <br />And of the secret sympathies that bind <br />All beings to their wondrous dwelling-place; <br />And of the perfect Unity enshrined <br />In omnipresence throughout time and space, <br />Alike informing with its full control <br />The dust, the stars, the worm, the human soul; <br /> <br />And most supremely of my human kin -- <br />Their thoughts and deeds, their valors and their fears, <br />Their griefs and joys, their virtue and their sin, <br />Their feasts and wars, their cradles and their biers, <br />Their temples, prisons, homes and ships and marts, <br />The subtlest windings of their brains and hearts. <br /> <br />So rich and sweet is Life. And what is Death? -- <br />The tranquil slumbers dear and strange and boon <br />That feed at whiles our waking being's breath; <br />The solemn midnight of this glorious noon, <br />With countless distant stars, and each a sun, <br />Revealed harmonious with our daily one.<br /><br />James Thomson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-i-must-sing-of-all-i-feel-and-know/
