{
 "id": "george-macdonald/the-diary-of-an-old-soul",
 "title": "The Diary of an Old Soul",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": "A Book of Strife",
 "poet": "George MacDonald",
 "poet_slug": "george-macdonald",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "A Book of Strife in the Form of the Diary of an Old Soul",
 "book_slug": "a-book-of-strife",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 1,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1880,
  "venue": "A Book of Strife in the Form of the Diary of an Old Soul (1880)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/abookstrifeinfo00macdgoog",
   "https://archive.org/metadata/abookstrifeinfo00macdgoog",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1953"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
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  "repo": "standardebooks/george-macdonald_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8949",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9543",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9984",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10578",
   "https://archive.org/details/bookofstrifeinfo00macd",
   "https://archive.org/details/discipleandothe02macdgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/hiddenlifeandoth00macduoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/discipleandothe02macdgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/rampolli00macd",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102955776",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011821572"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 2569,
  "n_stanzas": 367,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 66,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Sweet friends, receive my offering. You will find",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Against each worded page a white page set:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This is the mirror of each friendly mind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Reflecting that. In this book we are met.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Make it, dear hearts, of worth to you indeed:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let your white page be ground, my print be seed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Growing to golden ears, that faith and hope shall feed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord, what I once had done with youthful might,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had I been from the first true to the truth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grant me, now old, to do⁠—with better sight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And humbler heart, if not the brain of youth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So wilt thou, in thy gentleness and ruth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lead back thy old soul, by the path of pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Round to his best⁠—young eyes and heart and brain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A dim aurora rises in my east,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond the line of jagged questions hoar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if the head of our intombed High Priest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Began to glow behind the unopened door:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sure the gold wings will soon rise from the gray!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They rise not. Up I rise, press on the more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To meet the slow coming of the Master’s day.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Sometimes I wake, and, lo! I have forgot,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My soul that was at rest now resteth not,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For I am with myself and not with thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Truth seems a blind moon in a glaring morn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where nothing is but sick-heart vanity:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, thou who knowest! save thy child forlorn.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Death, like high faith, levelling, lifteth all.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I awake, my daughter and my son,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grown sister and brother, in my arms shall fall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tenfold my girl and boy. Sure every one",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of all the brood to the old wings will run.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whole-hearted is my worship of the man",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From whom my earthly history began.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thy fishes breathe but where thy waters roll;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy birds fly but within thy airy sea;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh breathe, oh think⁠—O Love, live into me;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unworthy is my life till all divine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till thou see in me only what is thine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then shall I breathe in sweetest sharing, then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Think in harmonious consort with my kin;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then shall I love well all my father’s men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Feel one with theirs the life my heart within.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh brothers! sisters holy! hearts divine!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then I shall be all yours, and nothing mine⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To every human heart a mother-twin.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I see a child before an empty house,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Knocking and knocking at the closed door;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He wakes dull echoes⁠—but nor man nor mouse,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If he stood knocking there for evermore.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A mother angel, see! folding each wing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Soft-walking, crosses straight the empty floor,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And opens to the obstinate praying thing.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Were there but some deep, holy spell, whereby",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Always I should remember thee⁠—some mode",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of feeling the pure heat-throb momently",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the spirit-fire still uttering this I!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, see thou to it, take thou remembrance’ load:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only when I bethink me can I cry;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Remember thou, and prick me with love’s goad.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If to myself⁠—“God sometimes interferes”⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I said, my faith at once would be struck blind.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see him all in all, the lifing mind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or nowhere in the vacant miles and years.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A love he is that watches and that hears,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or but a mist fumed up from minds of men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose fear and hope reach out beyond their ken.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "When I no more can stir my soul to move,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And life is but the ashes of a fire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I can but remember that my heart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Once used to live and love, long and aspire⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, be thou then the first, the one thou art;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be thou the calling, before all answering love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I thought that I had lost thee; but, behold!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou comest to me from the horizon low,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Across the fields outspread of green and gold⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fair carpet for thy feet to come and go.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whence I know not, or how to me thou art come!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not less my spirit with calm bliss doth glow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Meeting thee only thus, in nature vague and dumb.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My soul in storm is but a tattered sail,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In calm, ’tis but a limp and flapping thing:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh! swell it with thy breath; make it a wing⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To sweep through thee the ocean, with thee the wind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor rest until in thee its haven it shall find.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The idle flapping of the sail is doubt;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Faith swells it full to breast the breasting seas.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bold, conscience, fast, and rule the ruling helm;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hell’s freezing north no tempest can send out,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But it shall toss thee homeward to thy leas;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Boisterous wave-crest never shall o’erwhelm",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy sea-float bark as safe as field-borne rooted elm.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Sometimes, hard-trying, it seems I cannot pray⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For doubt, and pain, and anger, and all strife.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet some poor half-fledged prayer-bird from the nest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May fall, flit, fly, perch⁠—crouch in the bowery breast",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the large, nation-healing tree of life;⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Moveless there sit through all the burning day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And on my heart at night a fresh leaf cooling lay.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My harvest withers. Health, my means to live⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All things seem rushing straight into the dark.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the dark still is God. I would not give",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The smallest silver-piece to turn the rush",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Backward or sideways. Am I not a spark",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of him who is the light?⁠—Fair hope doth flush",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My east.⁠—Divine success⁠—Oh, hush and hark!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thy will be done. I yield up everything.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“The life is more than meat”⁠—then more than health;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“The body more than raiment”⁠—then than wealth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hairs I made not, thou art numbering.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art my life⁠—I the brook, thou the spring.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because thine eyes are open, I can see;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because thou art thyself, ’tis therefore I am me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "No sickness can come near to blast my health;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My life depends not upon any meat;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My bread comes not from any human tilth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No wings will grow upon my changeless wealth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wrong cannot touch it, violence or deceit;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art my life, my health, my bank, my barn⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And from all other gods thou plain dost warn.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Care thou for mine whom I must leave behind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Care that they know who ’tis for them takes care;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy present patience help them still to bear;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, keep them clearing, growing, heart and mind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In one thy oneness us together bind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Last earthly prayer with which to thee I cling⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grant that, save love, we owe not anything.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis well, for unembodied thought a live,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "True house to build⁠—of stubble, wood, nor hay;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, like bees round the flower by which they thrive,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My thoughts are busy with the informing truth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as I build, I feed, and grow in youth⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hoping to stand fresh, clean, and strong, and gay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When up the east comes dawning His great day.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thy will is truth⁠—’tis therefore fate, the strong.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would that my will did sweep full swing with thine!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then harmony with every spheric song,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And conscious power, would give sureness divine.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who thinks to thread thy great laws’ onward throng,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is as a fly that creeps his foolish way",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Athwart an engine’s wheels in smooth resistless play.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou in my heart hast planted, gardener divine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A scion of the tree of life: it grows;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But not in every wind or weather it blows;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The leaves fall sometimes from the baby tree,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the life-power seems melting into pine;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet still the sap keeps struggling to the shine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the unseen root clings cramplike unto thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Do thou, my God, my spirit’s weather control;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as I do not gloom though the day be dun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let me not gloom when earth-born vapours roll",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Across the infinite zenith of my soul.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should sudden brain-frost through the heart’s summer run,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cold, weary, joyless, waste of air and sun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art my south, my summer-wind, my all, my one.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O Life, why dost thou close me up in death?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O Health, why make me inhabit heaviness?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I ask, yet know: the sum of this distress,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pang-haunted body, sore-dismayed mind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is but the egg that rounds the winged faith;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When that its path into the air shall find,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My heart will follow, high above cold, rain, and wind.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I can no more than lift my weary eyes;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore I lift my weary eyes⁠—no more.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But my eyes pull my heart, and that, before",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis well awake, knocks where the conscience lies;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Conscience runs quick to the spirit’s hidden door:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Straightway, from every sky-ward window, cries",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up to the Father’s listening ears arise.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Not in my fancy now I search to find thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not in its loftiest forms would shape or bind thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I cry to one whom I can never know,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Filling me with an infinite overflow;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not to a shape that dwells within my heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Clothed in perfections love and truth assigned thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But to the God thou knowest that thou art.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Not, Lord, because I have done well or ill;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not that my mind looks up to thee clear-eyed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not that it struggles in fast cerements tied;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not that I need thee daily sorer still;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not that I wretched, wander from thy will;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not now for any cause to thee I cry,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But this, that thou art thou, and here am I.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yestereve, Death came, and knocked at my thin door.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I from my window looked: the thing I saw,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The shape uncouth, I had not seen before.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was disturbed⁠—with fear, in sooth, not awe;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whereof ashamed, I instantly did rouse",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My will to seek thee⁠—only to fear the more:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Alas! I could not find thee in the house.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I was like Peter when he began to sink.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To thee a new prayer therefore I have got⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That, when Death comes in earnest to my door,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou wouldst thyself go, when the latch doth clink,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lead him to my room, up to my cot;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then hold thy child’s hand, hold and leave him not,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till Death has done with him for evermore.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Till Death has done with him?⁠—Ah, leave me then!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Death has done with me, oh, nevermore!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He comes⁠—and goes⁠—to leave me in thy arms,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nearer thy heart, oh, nearer than before!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To lay thy child, naked, new-born again",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of mother earth, crept free through many harms,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon thy bosom⁠—still to the very core.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Come to me, Lord: I will not speculate how,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor think at which door I would have thee appear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor put off calling till my floors be swept,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But cry, “Come, Lord, come any way, come now.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Doors, windows, I throw wide; my head I bow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sit like some one who so long has slept",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That he knows nothing till his life draw near.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O Lord, I have been talking to the people;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thought’s wheels have round me whirled a fiery zone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the recoil of my words’ airy ripple",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My heart unheedful has puffed up and blown.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore I cast myself before thee prone:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lay cool hands on my burning brain, and press",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I to myself have neither power nor worth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Patience nor love, nor anything right good;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My soul is a poor land, plenteous in dearth⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here blades of grass, there a small herb for food⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A nothing that would be something if it could;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But if obedience, Lord, in me do grow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall one day be better than I know.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The worst power of an evil mood is this⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It makes the bastard self seem in the right,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Self, self the end, the goal of human bliss.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But if the Christ-self in us be the might",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of saving God, why should I spend my force",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a dark thing to reason of the light⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not push it rough aside, and hold obedient course?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Back still it comes to this: there was a man",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who said, “I am the truth, the life, the way:”⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall I pass on, or shall I stop and hear?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Come to the Father but by me none can:”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What then is this?⁠—am I not also one",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of those who live in fatherless dismay?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I stand, I look, I listen, I draw near.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My Lord, I find that nothing else will do,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But follow where thou goest, sit at thy feet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And where I have thee not, still run to meet.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Roses are scentless, hopeless are the morns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rest is but weakness, laughter crackling thorns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If thou, the Truth, do not make them the true:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art my life, O Christ, and nothing else will do.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou art here⁠—in heaven, I know, but not from here⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Although thy separate self do not appear;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I could part the light from out the day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There I should have thee! But thou art too near:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How find thee walking, when thou art the way?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, present Christ! make my eyes keen as stings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To see thee at their heart, the glory even of things.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "That thou art nowhere to be found, agree",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wise men, whose eyes are but for surfaces;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Men with eyes opened by the second birth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To whom the seen, husk of the unseen is,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Descry thee soul of everything on earth.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who know thy ends, thy means and motions see:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eyes made for glory soon discover thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou near then, I draw nearer⁠—to thy feet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sitting in thy shadow, look out on the shine;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ready at thy first word to leave my seat⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not thee: thou goest too. From every clod",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into thy footprint flows the indwelling wine;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in my daily bread, keen-eyed I greet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its being’s heart, the very body of God.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou wilt interpret life to me, and men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Art, nature, yea, my own soul’s mysteries⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bringing, truth out, clear-joyous, to my ken,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fair as the morn trampling the dull night. Then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The lone hill-side shall hear exultant cries;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The joyous see me joy, the weeping weep;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The watching smile, as Death breathes on me his cold sleep.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I search my heart⁠—I search, and find no faith.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hidden He may be in its many folds⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see him not revealed in all the world",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Duty’s firm shape thins to a misty wraith.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No good seems likely. To and fro I am hurled.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have no stay. Only obedience holds:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I haste, I rise, I do the thing he saith.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou wouldst not have thy man crushed back to clay;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It must be, God, thou hast a strength to give",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To him that fain would do what thou dost say;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Else how shall any soul repentant live,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Old griefs and new fears hurrying on dismay?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let pain be what thou wilt, kind and degree,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only in pain calm thou my heart with thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I will not shift my ground like Moab’s king,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But from this spot whereon I stand, I pray⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From this same barren rock to thee I say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Lord, in my commonness, in this very thing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That haunts my soul with folly⁠—through the clay",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of this my pitcher, see the lamp’s dim flake;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And hear the blow that would the pitcher break.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Be thou the well by which I lie and rest;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be thou my tree of life, my garden ground;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be thou my home, my fire, my chamber blest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My book of wisdom, loved of all the best;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, be my friend, each day still newer found,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As the eternal days and nights go round!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nay, nay⁠—thou art my God, in whom all loves are bound!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Two things at once, thou know’st I cannot think.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When busy with the work thou givest me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I cannot consciously think then of thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then why, when next thou lookest o’er the brink",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of my horizon, should my spirit shrink,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Reproached and fearful, nor to greet thee run?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can I be two when I am only one.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My soul must unawares have sunk awry.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some care, poor eagerness, ambition of work,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some old offence that unforgiving did lurk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or some self-gratulation, soft and sly⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something not thy sweet will, not the good part,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While the home-guard looked out, stirred up the old murk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And so I gloomed away from thee, my Heart.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Therefore I make provision, ere I begin",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To do the thing thou givest me to do,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Praying⁠—Lord, wake me oftener, lest I sin.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Amidst my work, open thine eyes on me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I may wake and laugh, and know and see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then with healed heart afresh catch up the clue,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And singing drop into my work anew.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If I should slow diverge, and listless stray",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into some thought, feeling, or dream unright,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O Watcher, my backsliding soul affray;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let me not perish of the ghastly blight.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be thou, O Life eternal, in me light;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then merest approach of selfish or impure",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall start me up alive, awake, secure.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord, I have fallen again⁠—a human clod!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Selfish I was, and heedless to offend;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stood on my rights. Thy own child would not send",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Away his shreds of nothing for the whole God!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wretched, to thee who savest, low I bend:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Give me the power to let my rag-rights go",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the great wind that from thy gulf doth blow.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Keep me from wrath, let it seem ever so right:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My wrath will never work thy righteousness.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up, up the hill, to the whiter than snow-shine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Help me to climb, and dwell in pardon’s light.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I must be pure as thou, or ever less",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than thy design of me⁠—therefore incline",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My heart to take men’s wrongs as thou tak’st mine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord, in thy spirit’s hurricane, I pray,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strip my soul naked⁠—dress it then thy way.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Change for me all my rags to cloth of gold.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who would not poverty for riches yield?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A hovel sell to buy a treasure-field?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who would a mess of porridge careful hold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Against the universe’s birthright old?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Help me to yield my will, in labour even,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor toil on toil, greedy of doing, heap⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fretting I cannot more than me is given;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That with the finest clay my wheel runs slow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor lets the lovely thing the shapely grow;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That memory what thought gives it cannot keep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And nightly rimes ere morn like cistus-petals go.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis⁠—shall thy will be done for me?⁠—or mine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I be made a thing not after thine⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My own, and dear in paltriest details?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall I be born of God, or of mere man?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be made like Christ, or on some other plan?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I let all run:⁠—set thou and trim my sails;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Home then my course, let blow whatever gales.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "With thee on board, each sailor is a king",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor I mere captain of my vessel then,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But heir of earth and heaven, eternal child;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Daring all truth, nor fearing anything;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mighty in love, the servant of all men;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Resenting nothing, taking rage and blare",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into the Godlike silence of a loving care.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I cannot see, my God, a reason why",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From morn to night I go not gladsome free;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For, if thou art what my soul thinketh thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There is no burden but should lightly lie,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No duty but a joy at heart must be:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love’s perfect will can be nor sore nor small,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For God is light⁠—in him no darkness is at all.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis something thus to think, and half to trust⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, ah! my very heart, God-born, should lie",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spread to the light, clean, clear of mire and rust,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And like a sponge drink the divine sunbeams.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What resolution then, strong, swift, and high!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What pure devotion, or to live or die!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in my sleep, what true, what perfect dreams!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There is a misty twilight of the soul,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A sickly eclipse, low brooding o’er a man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the poor brain is as an empty bowl,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the thought-spirit, weariful and wan,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Turning from that which yet it loves the best,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sinks moveless, with life-poverty opprest:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Watch then, O Lord, thy feebly glimmering coal.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I cannot think; in me is but a void;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have felt much, and want to feel no more;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My soul is hungry for some poorer fare⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some earthly nectar, gold not unalloyed:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The little child that’s happy to the core,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will leave his mother’s lap, run down the stair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Play with the servants⁠—is his mother annoyed?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I would not have it so. Weary and worn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why not to thee run straight, and be at rest?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Motherward, with toy new, or garment torn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The child that late forsook her changeless breast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Runs to home’s heart, the heaven that’s heavenliest:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In joy or sorrow, feebleness or might,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Peace or commotion, be thou, Father, my delight.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The thing I would say, still comes forth with doubt",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And difference:⁠—is it that thou shap’st my ends?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or is it only the necessity",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of stubborn words, that shift sluggish about,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Warping my thought as it the sentence bends?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Have thou a part in it, O Lord, and I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall say a truth, if not the thing I try.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Gather my broken fragments to a whole,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As these four quarters make a shining day.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into thy basket, for my golden bowl,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take up the things that I have cast away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In vice or indolence or unwise play.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let mine be a merry, all-receiving heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But make it a whole, with light in every part.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The song birds that come to me night and morn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fly oft away and vanish if I sleep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor to my fowling-net will one return:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is the thing ever ours we cannot keep?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But their souls go not out into the deep.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What matter if with changed song they come back?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Old strength nor yet fresh beauty shall they lack.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Gloriously wasteful, O my Lord, art thou!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sunset faints after sunset into the night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Splendorously dying from thy window-sill⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For ever. Sad our poverty doth bow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before the riches of thy making might:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sweep from thy space thy systems at thy will⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In thee the sun sets every sunset still.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And in the perfect time, O perfect God,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When we are in our home, our natal home,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When joy shall carry every sacred load,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And from its life and peace no heart shall roam,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What if thou make us able to make like thee⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To light with moons, to clothe with greenery,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To hang gold sunsets o’er a rose and purple sea!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then to his neighbour one may call out, “Come!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Brother, come hither⁠—I would show you a thing;”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lo, a vision of his imagining,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Informed of thought which else had rested dumb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before the neighbour’s truth-delighted eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the great æther of existence rise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And two hearts each to each the closer cling!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We make, but thou art the creating core.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whatever thing I dream, invent, or feel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art the heart of it, the atmosphere.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art inside all love man ever bore;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yea, the love itself, whatever thing be dear.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Man calls his dog, he follows at his heel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because thou first art love, self-caused, essential, mere.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This day be with me, Lord, when I go forth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be nearer to me than I am able to ask.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In merriment, in converse, or in task,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Walking the street, listening to men of worth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or greeting such as only talk and bask,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be thy thought still my waiting soul around,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And if He come, I shall be watching found.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What if, writing, I always seem to leave",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some better thing, or better way, behind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why should I therefore fret at all, or grieve!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The worse I drop, that I the better find;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The best is only in thy perfect mind.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fallen threads I will not search for⁠—I will weave.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who makes the mill-wheel backward strike to grind!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Be with me, Lord. Keep me beyond all prayers:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For more than all my prayers my need of thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thou beyond all need, all unknown cares;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What the heart’s dear imagination dares,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou dost transcend in measureless majesty",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All prayers in one⁠—my God, be unto me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy own eternal self, absolutely.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Where should the unknown treasures of the truth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lie, but there whence the truth comes out the most⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the Son of man, folded in love and ruth?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fair shore we see, fair ocean; but behind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lie infinite reaches bathing many a coast⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The human thought of the eternal mind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pulsed by a living tide, blown by a living wind.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou, healthful Father, art the Ancient of Days,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Jesus is the eternal youth of thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our old age is the scorching of the bush",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By life’s indwelling, incorruptible blaze.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O Life, burn at this feeble shell of me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till I the sore singed garment off shall push,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flap out my Psyche wings, and to thee rush.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But shall I then rush to thee like a dart?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or lie long hours æonian yet betwixt",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This hunger in me, and the Father’s heart?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It shall be good, how ever, and not ill;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of things and thoughts even now thou art my next;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sole neighbour, and no space between, thou art⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And yet art drawing nearer, nearer still.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Therefore, my brothers, therefore, sisters dear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "However I, troubled or selfish, fail",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In tenderness, or grace, or service clear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I every moment draw to you more near;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God in us from our hearts veil after veil",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Keeps lifting, till we see with his own sight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all together run in unity’s delight.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I love thee, Lord, for very greed of love⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not of the precious streams that towards me move,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But of the indwelling, outgoing, fountain store.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than mine, oh, many an ignorant heart loves more!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore the more, with Mary at thy feet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I must sit worshipping⁠—that, in my core,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy words may fan to a flame the low primeval heat.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Oh my beloved, gone to heaven from me!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I would be rich in love to heap you with love;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I long to love you, sweet ones, perfectly⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like God, who sees no spanning vault above,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No earth below, and feels no circling air⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Infinitely, no boundary anywhere.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am a beast until I love as God doth love.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ah, say not, ’tis but perfect self I want",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But if it were, that self is fit to live",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose perfectness is still itself to scant,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which never longs to have, but still to give.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A self I must have, or not be at all:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love, give me a self self-giving⁠—or let me fall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To endless darkness back, and free me from life’s thrall.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Back,” said I! Whither back? How to the dark?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From no dark came I, but the depths of light;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the sun-heart I came, of love a spark:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What should I do but love with all my might?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To die of love severe and pure and stark,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were scarcely loss; to lord a loveless height⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That were a living death, damnation’s positive night.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But love is life. To die of love is then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The only pass to higher life than this.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All love is death to loving, living men;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All deaths are leaps across clefts to the abyss.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our life is the broken current, Lord, of thine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flashing from morn to morn with conscious shine⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then first by willing death self-made, then life divine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I love you, my sweet children, who are gone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into another mansion; but I know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I love you not as I shall love you yet.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I love you, sweet dead children; there are none",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the land to which ye vanished to go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose hearts more truly on your hearts are set⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet should I die of grief to love you only so.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“I am but as a beast before thee, Lord.”⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Great poet-king, I thank thee for the word.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leave not thy son half-made in beastly guise⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Less than a man, with more than human cries⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An unshaped thing in which thyself cries out!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Finish me, Father; now I am but a doubt;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh! make thy moaning thing for joy to leap and shout.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Let my soul talk to thee in ordered words,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O king of kings, O lord of only lords!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I am thinking thee within my heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the broken reflex be not far apart.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The troubled water, dim with upstirred soil,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Makes not the image which it yet can spoil:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come nearer, Lord, and smooth the wrinkled coil.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O Lord, when I do think of my departed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I think of thee who art the death of parting;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of him who crying Father breathed his last,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then radiant from the sepulchre upstarted.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even then, I think, thy hands and feet kept smarting:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With us the bitterness of death is past,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But by the feet he still doth hold us fast.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Therefore our hands thy feet do hold as fast.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We pray not to be spared the sorest pang,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But only⁠—be thou with us to the last.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let not our heart be troubled at the clang",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of hammer and nails, nor dread the spear’s keen fang,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor the ghast sickening that comes of pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor yet the last clutch of the banished brain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord, pity us: we have no making power;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then give us making will, adopting thine.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Make, make, and make us; temper, and refine.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be in us patience⁠—neither to start nor cower.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Christ, if thou be not with us⁠—not by sign,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But presence, actual as the wounds that bleed⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We shall not bear it, but shall die indeed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O Christ, have pity on all men when they come",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unto the border haunted of dismay;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When that they know not draweth very near⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The other thing, the opposite of day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Formless and ghastly, sick, and gaping-dumb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before which even love doth lose his cheer:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O radiant Christ, remember then thy fear.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Be by me, Lord, this day. Thou know’st I mean⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, make me mind thee. I herewith forestall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My own forgetfulness, when I stoop to glean",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The corn of earth⁠—which yet thy hand lets fall.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be for me then against myself. Oh lean",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over me then when I invert my cup;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take me, if by the hair, and lift me up.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord of essential life, help me to die.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To will to die is one with highest life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The mightiest act that to Will’s hand doth lie⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Born of God’s essence, and of man’s hard strife:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God, give me strength my evil self to kill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And die into the heaven of thy pure will.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then shall this body’s death be very tolerable.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "As to our mothers came help in our birth⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not lost in lifing us, but saved and blest⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Self bearing self, although right sorely prest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall nothing lose, but die and be at rest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In life eternal, beyond all care and dearth.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God-born then truly, a man does no more ill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Perfectly loves, and has whate’er he will.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "As our dear animals do suffer less",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because their pain spreads neither right nor left,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lost in oblivion and foresightlessness⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our suffering sore by faith shall be bereft",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of all dismay, and every weak excess.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His presence shall be better in our pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than even self-absence to the weaker brain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Father, let this cup pass.” He prayed⁠—was heard.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What cup was it that passed away from him?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sure not the death-cup, now filled to the brim!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There was no quailing in the awful word;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He still was king of kings, of lords the lord:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He feared lest, in the suffering waste and grim,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His faith might grow too faint and sickly dim.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thy mind, my master, I will dare explore;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What we are told, that we are meant to know.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into thy soul I search yet more and more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Led by the lamp of my desire and woe.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If thee, my Lord, I may not understand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am a wanderer in a houseless land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A weeping thirst by hot winds ever fanned.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Therefore I look again⁠—and think I see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That, when at last he did cry out, “My God,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why hast thou me forsaken?” straight man’s rod",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was turned aside; for, that same moment, he",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cried “Father!” and gave up will and breath and spirit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into his hands whose all he did inherit⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Delivered, glorified eternally.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord, I do choose the higher than my will.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I would be handled by thy nursing arms",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After thy will, not my infant alarms.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hurt me thou wilt⁠—but then more loving still,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If more can be and less, in love’s perfect zone!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My fancy shrinks from least of all thy harms,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But do thy will with me⁠—I am thine own.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Some things wilt thou not one day turn to dreams?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some dreams wilt thou not one day turn to fact?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The thing that painful, more than should be, seems,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall not thy sliding years with them retract⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall fair realities not counteract?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The thing that was well dreamed of bliss and joy⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wilt thou not breathe thy life into the toy?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I have had dreams of absolute delight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond all waking bliss⁠—only of grass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flowers, wind, a peak, a limb of marble white;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They dwell with me like things half come to pass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "True prophecies:⁠—when I with thee am right,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I pray, waking, for such a joy of sight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou with the gold, wilt not refuse the brass.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I think I shall not ever pray for such;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy bliss will overflood my heart and brain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I want no unripe things back again.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love ever fresher, lovelier than of old⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How should it want its more exchanged for much?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love will not backward sigh, but forward strain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On in the tale still telling, never told.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What has been, shall not only be, but is.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hues of dreamland, strange and sweet and tender",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are but hint-shadows of full many a splendour",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which the high Parent-love will yet unroll",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before his child’s obedient, humble soul.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah, me, my God! in thee lies every bliss",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose shadow men go hunting wearily amiss.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now, ere I sleep, I wonder what I shall dream.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some sense of being, utter new, may come",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into my soul while I am blind and dumb⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With shapes and airs and scents which dark hours teem,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of other sort than those that haunt the day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hinting at precious things, ages away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the long tale of us God to himself doth say.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Late, in a dream, an unknown lady I saw",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stand on a tomb; down she to me stepped thence.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“They tell me,” quoth I, “thou art one of the dead!”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And scarce believed for gladness the yea she said;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A strange auroral bliss, an arctic awe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A new, outworldish joy awoke intense,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To think I talked with one that verily was dead.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou dost demand our love, holy Lord Christ,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And batest nothing of thy modesty;⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou know’st no other way to bliss the highest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than loving thee, the loving, perfectly.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou lovest perfectly⁠—that is thy bliss:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We must love like thee, or our being miss⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, to love perfectly, love perfect Love, love thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Here is my heart, O Christ; thou know’st I love thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But wretched is the thing I call my love.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O Love divine, rise up in me and move me⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I follow surely when thou first dost move.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To love the perfect love, is primal, mere",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Necessity; and he who holds life dear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Must love thee every hope and heart above.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Might I but scatter interfering things⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Questions and doubts, distrusts and anxious pride,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in thy garment, as under gathering wings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nestle obedient to thy loving side,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Easy it were to love thee. But when thou",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Send’st me to think and labour from thee wide,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love falls to asking many a why and how.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Easier it were, but poorer were the love.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, I would have me love thee from the deeps⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of troubled thought, of pain, of weariness.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through seething wastes below, billows above,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My soul should rise in eager, hungering leaps;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through thorny thicks, through sands unstable press⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out of my dream to him who slumbers not nor sleeps.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I do not fear the greatness of thy command⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To keep heart-open-house to brother men;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But till in thy God’s love perfect I stand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My door not wide enough will open. Then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each man will be love-awful in my sight;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, open to the eternal morning’s might,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each human face will shine my window for thy light.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Make me all patience and all diligence;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Patience, that thou mayst have thy time with me;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Diligence, that I waste not thy expense",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In sending out to bring me home to thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What though thy work in me transcends my sense⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Too fine, too high, for me to understand⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hope entirely. On, Lord, with thy labour grand.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lest I be humbled at the last, and told",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That my great labour was but for my peace",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That not for love or truth had I been bold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But merely for a prisoned heart’s release;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Careful, I humble me now before thy feet:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whate’er I be, I cry, and will not cease⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let me not perish, though favour be not meet.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For, what I seek thou knowest I must find,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or miserably die for lack of love.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I justify thee: what is in thy mind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If it be shame to me, all shame above.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou know’st I choose it⁠—know’st I would not shove",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hand away that stripped me for the rod⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If so it pleased my Life, my love-made-angry God.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I see a door, a multitude near by,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In creed and quarrel, sure disciples all!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gladly they would, they say, enter the hall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But cannot, the stone threshold is so high.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From unseen hand, full many a feeding crumb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Slow dropping o’er the threshold high doth come:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They gather and eat, with much disputing hum.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Still and anon, a loud clear voice doth call⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Make your feet clean, and enter so the hall.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They hear, they stoop, they gather each a crumb.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh the deaf people! would they were also dumb!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hear how they talk, and lack of Christ deplore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stamping with muddy feet about the door,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And will not wipe them clean to walk upon his floor!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But see, one comes; he listens to the voice;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Careful he wipes his weary dusty feet!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The voice hath spoken⁠—to him is left no choice;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He hurries to obey⁠—that only is meet.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Low sinks the threshold, levelled with the ground;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The man leaps in⁠—to liberty he’s bound.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The rest go talking, walking, picking round.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If I, thus writing, rebuke my neighbour dull,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And talk, and write, and enter not the door,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than all the rest I wrong Christ tenfold more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Making his gift of vision void and null.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Help me this day to be thy humble sheep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eating thy grass, and following, thou before;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From wolfish lies my life, O Shepherd, keep.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "God, help me, dull of heart, to trust in thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art the father of me⁠—not any mood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can part me from the One, the verily Good.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When fog and failure o’er my being brood.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When life looks but a glimmering marshy clod,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No fire out flashing from the living God⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then, then, to rest in faith were worthy victory!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To trust is gain and growth, not mere sown seed!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Faith heaves the world round to the heavenly dawn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In whose great light the soul doth spell and read",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Itself high-born, its being derived and drawn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the eternal self-existent fire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then, mazed with joy of its own heavenly breed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Exultant-humble falls before its awful sire.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Art thou not, Jesus, busy like to us?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thee shall I image as one sitting still,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ordering all things in thy potent will,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silent, and thinking ever to thy father,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose thought through thee flows multitudinous?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or shall I think of thee as journeying, rather,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ceaseless through space, because thou everything dost fill?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "That all things thou dost fill, I well may think⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy power doth reach me in so many ways.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou who in one the universe dost bind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Passest through all the channels of my mind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sun of thought, across the farthest brink",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of consciousness thou sendest me thy rays;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor drawest them in when lost in sleep I sink.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So common are thy paths, thy coming seems",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only another phase oft of my me;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But nearer is my I, O Lord, to thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than is my I to what itself it deems;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How better then couldst thou, O master, come,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than from thy home across into my home,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Straight o’er the marches that I cannot see!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Marches?⁠—’Twixt thee and me there’s no division,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Except the meeting of thy will and mine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The loves that love, the wills that will the same.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where thine meets mine is my life’s true condition;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yea, only there it burns with any flame.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy will but holds me to my life’s fruition.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O God, I would⁠—I have no mine that is not thine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I look for thee, and do not see thee come.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I could see thee, ’twere a commoner thing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And shallower comfort would thy coming bring.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Earth, sea, and air lie round me moveless dumb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Never a tremble, an expectant hum,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To tell the Lord of Hearts is drawing near:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lo! in the looking eyes, the looked for Lord is here.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I take a comfort from my very badness:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is for lack of thee that I am bad.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How close, how infinitely closer yet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Must I come to thee, ere I can pay one debt",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which mere humanity has on me set!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“How close to thee!”⁠—no wonder, soul, thou art glad!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oneness with him is the eternal gladness.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What can there be so close as making and made?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nought twinned can be so near; thou art more nigh",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To me, my God, than is this thinking I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To that I mean when I by me is said;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art more near me, than is my ready will",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Near to my love, though both one place do fill;⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet, till we are one⁠—Ah me! the long until!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then shall my heart behold thee everywhere.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The vision rises of a speechless thing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A perfectness of bliss beyond compare!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A time when I nor breathe nor think nor move,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I do breathe and think and feel thy love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The soul of all the songs the saints do sing!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And life dies out in bliss, to come again in prayer.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "In the great glow of that great love, this death",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would melt away like a fantastic cloud;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I should no more shrink from it than from the breath",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That makes in the frosty air a nimbus-shroud;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou, Love, hast conquered death, and I aloud",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should triumph over him, with thy saintly crowd,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That where the Lamb goes ever followeth.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What though my words glance sideways from the thing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which I would utter in thine ear, my sire!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Truth in the inward parts thou dost desire⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wise hunger, not a fitness fine of speech:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The little child that clamouring fails to reach",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With upstretched hand the fringe of her attire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet meets the mother’s hand down hurrying.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Even when their foolish words they turned on him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He did not his disciples send away;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He knew their hearts were foolish, eyes were dim,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And therefore by his side needs must they stay.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou will not, Lord, send me away from thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I am foolish, make thy cock crow grim;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If that is not enough, turn, Lord, and look on me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Another day of gloom and slanting rain!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of closed skies, cold winds, and blight and bane!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such not the weather, Lord, which thou art fain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To give thy chosen, sweet to heart and brain!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until we mourn, thou keep’st the merry tune;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy hand unloved its pleasure must restrain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor spoil both gift and child by lavishing too soon.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But all things shall be ours! Up, heart, and sing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All things were made for us⁠—we are God’s heirs⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Moon, sun, and wildest comets that do trail",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A crowd of small worlds for a swiftness-tail!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up from Thy depths in me, my child-heart bring⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The child alone inherits anything:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God’s little children-gods⁠—all things are theirs!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thy great deliverance is a greater thing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than purest imagination can foregrasp;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A thing beyond all conscious hungering,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond all hope that makes the poet sing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It takes the clinging world, undoes its clasp,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Floats it afar upon a mighty sea,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And leaves us quiet with love and liberty and thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Through all the fog, through all earth’s wintery sighs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I scent Thy spring, I feel the eternal air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Warm, soft, and dewy, filled with flowery eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And gentle, murmuring motions everywhere⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of life in heart, and tree, and brook, and moss;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy breath wakes beauty, love, and bliss, and prayer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And strength to hang with nails upon thy cross.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If thou hadst closed my life in seed and husk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And cast me into soft, warm, damp, dark mould,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All unaware of light come through the dusk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I yet should feel the split of each shelly fold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should feel the growing of my prisoned heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And dully dream of being slow unrolled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in some other vagueness taking part.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And little as the world I should foreknow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up into which I was about to rise⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its rains, its radiance, airs, and warmth, and skies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How it would greet me, how its wind would blow⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As little, it may be, I do know the good",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which I for years half darkling have pursued⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The second birth for which my nature cries.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The life that knows not, patient waits, nor longs:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I know, and would be patient, yet would long.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I can be patient for all coming songs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But let me sing my one monotonous song.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To me the time is slow my mould among;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To quicker life I fain would spur and start",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The aching growth at my dull-swelling heart.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Christ is the pledge that I shall one day see;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That one day, still with him, I shall awake,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And know my God, at one with him and free.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O lordly essence, come to life in me;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The will-throb let me feel that doth me make;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now have I many a mighty hope in thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then shall I rest although the universe should quake.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Haste to me, Lord, when this fool-heart of mine",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Begins to gnaw itself with selfish craving;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or, like a foul thing scarcely worth the saving,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Swoln up with wrath, desireth vengeance fine.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Haste, Lord, to help, when reason favours wrong;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Haste when thy soul, the high-born thing divine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is torn by passion’s raving, maniac throng.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Fair freshness of the God-breathed spirit air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pass through my soul, and make it strong to love;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wither with gracious cold what demons dare",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shoot from my hell into my world above;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let them drop down, like leaves the sun doth sear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And flutter far into the inane and bare,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leaving my middle-earth calm, wise, and clear.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Even thou canst give me neither thought nor thing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were it the priceless pearl hid in the land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which, if I fix thereon a greedy gaze,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Becomes not poison that doth burn and cling;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their own bad look my foolish eyes doth daze,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They see the gift, see not the giving hand⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the living root the apple dead I wring.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This versing, even the reading of the tale",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That brings my heart its joy unspeakable,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes will softly, unsuspectedly hale",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That heart from thee, and all its pulses quell.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Discovery’s pride, joy’s bliss, take aback my sail,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sweep me from thy presence and my grace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because my eyes dropped from the master’s face.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Afresh I seek thee. Lead me⁠—once more I pray⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even should it be against my will, thy way.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let me not feel thee foreign any hour,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or shrink from thee as an estranged power.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through doubt, through faith, through bliss, through stark dismay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through sunshine, wind, or snow, or fog, or shower,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Draw me to thee who art my only day.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I would go near thee⁠—but I cannot press",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into thy presence⁠—it helps not to presume.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy doors are deeds; the handles are their doing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He whose day-life is obedient righteousness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who, after failure, or a poor success,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rises up, stronger effort yet renewing⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He finds thee, Lord, at length, in his own common room.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord, thou hast carried me through this evening’s duty;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am released, weary, and well content.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O soul, put on the evening dress of beauty,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy sunset-flush, of gold and purple blent!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Alas, the moment I turn to my heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Feeling runs out of doors, or stands apart!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But such as I am, Lord, take me as thou art.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The word he then did speak, fits now as then,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the same kind of men doth mock at it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God-fools, God-drunkards these do call the men",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who think the poverty of their all not fit,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Borne humbly by their art, their voice, their pen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Save for its allness, at thy feet to fling,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For whom all is unfit that is not everything.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O Christ, my life, possess me utterly.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take me and make a little Christ of me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I am anything but thy father’s son,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis something not yet from the darkness won.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, give me light to live with open eyes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, give me life to hope above all skies.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Give me thy spirit to haunt the Father with my cries.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis hard for man to rouse his spirit up⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is the human creative agony,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though but to hold the heart an empty cup,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or tighten on the team the rigid rein.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Many will rather lie among the slain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than creep through narrow ways the light to gain⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than wake the will, and be born bitterly.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But he who would be born again indeed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Must wake his soul unnumbered times a day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And urge himself to life with holy greed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now ope his bosom to the Wind’s free play;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And now, with patience forceful, hard, lie still,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Submiss and ready to the making will,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Athirst and empty, for God’s breath to fill.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "All times are thine whose will is our remede.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Man turns to thee, thou hast not turned away;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The look he casts, thy labour that did breed⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is thy work, thy business all the day:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That look, not foregone fitness, thou dost heed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For duty absolute how be fitter than now?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or learn by shunning?⁠—Lord, I come; help thou.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ever above my coldness and my doubt",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rises up something, reaching forth a hand:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This thing I know, but cannot understand.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is it the God in me that rises out",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond my self, trailing it up with him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Towards the spirit-home, the freedom-land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond my conscious ken, my near horizon’s brim?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O God of man, my heart would worship all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My fellow men, the flashes from thy fire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Them in good sooth my lofty kindred call,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Born of the same one heart, the perfect sire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love of my kind alone can set me free;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Help me to welcome all that come to me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not close my doors and dream solitude liberty!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A loving word may set some door ajar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where seemed no door, and that may enter in",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which lay at the heart of that same loving word.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In my still chamber dwell thou always, Lord;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy presence there will carriage true afford;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "True words will flow, pure of design to win;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to my men my door shall have no bar.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I think thy answers make me what I am.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like weary waves thought follows upon thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the still depth beneath is all thine own,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there thou mov’st in paths to us unknown.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out of strange strife thy peace is strangely wrought;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If the lion in us pray⁠—thou answerest the lamb.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So bound in selfishness am I, so chained,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I know it must be glorious to be free",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But know not what, full-fraught, the word doth mean.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By loss on loss I have severely gained",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wisdom enough my slavery to see;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But liberty, pure, absolute, serene,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No freëst-visioned slave has ever seen.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For, that great freedom how should such as I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be able to imagine in such a self?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Less hopeless far the miser man might try",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To image the delight of friend-shared pelf.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Freedom is to be like thee, face and heart;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To know it, Lord, I must be as thou art,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I cannot breed the imagination high.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet hints come to me from the realm unknown;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Airs drift across the twilight border land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Odoured with life; and as from some far strand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sea-murmured, whispers to my heart are blown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That fill me with a joy I cannot speak,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yea, from whose shadow words drop faint and weak:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thee, God, I shadow in that region grand.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O Christ, who didst appear in Judah land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thence by the cross go back to God’s right hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Plain history, and things our sense beyond,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In thee together come and correspond:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How rulest thou from the undiscovered bourne",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The world-wise world that laughs thee still to scorn?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Please, Lord, let thy disciple understand.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis heart on heart thou rulest. Thou art the same",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At God’s right hand as here exposed to shame,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And therefore workest now as thou didst then⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Feeding the faint divine in humble men.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through all thy realms from thee goes out heart-power,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Working the holy, satisfying hour,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When all shall love, and all be loved again.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "From thine, as then, the healing virtue goes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into our hearts⁠—that is the Father’s plan.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From heart to heart it sinks, it steals, it flows,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From these that know thee still infecting those.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here is my heart⁠—from thine, Lord, fill it up,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I may offer it as the holy cup",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of thy communion to my every man.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "When thou dost send out whirlwinds on thy seas,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Alternatest thy lightning with its roar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy night with morning, and thy clouds with stars",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or, mightier force unseen in midst of these,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Orderest the life in every airy pore;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Guidest men’s efforts, rul’st mishaps and jars⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis only for their hearts, and nothing more.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This, this alone thy father careth for⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That men should live hearted throughout with thee⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because the simple, only life thou art,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the very truth of living, the pure heart.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For this, deep waters whelm the fruitful lea,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wars ravage, famine wastes, plague withers, nor",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall cease till men have chosen the better part.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But, like a virtuous medicine, self-diffused",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through all men’s hearts thy love shall sink and float;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till every feeling false, and thought unwise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Selfish, and seeking, shall, sternly disused,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wither, and die, and shrivel up to nought;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Christ, whom they did hang ’twixt earth and skies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up in the inner world of men arise.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Make me a fellow worker with thee, Christ;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nought else befits a God-born energy;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of all that’s lovely, only lives the highest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lifing the rest that it shall never die.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up I would be to help thee⁠—for thou liest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not, linen-swathed in Joseph’s garden-tomb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But walkest crowned, creation’s heart and bloom.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My God, when I would lift my heart to thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Imagination instantly doth set",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A cloudy something, thin, and vast, and vague,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To stand for him who is the fact of me;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then up the Will, and doth her weakness plague",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To pay the heart her duty and her debt,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Showing the face that hearkeneth to the plea.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And hence it comes that thou at times dost seem",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To fade into an image of my mind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I, dreamer, cover, hide thee up with dream⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thee, primal, individual entity!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No likeness will I seek to frame or find,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But cry to that which thou dost choose to be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To that which is my sight, therefore I cannot see.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "No likeness? Lo, the Christ! Oh, large Enough!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see, yet fathom not the face he wore.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He is⁠—and out of him there is no stuff",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To make a man. Let fail me every spark",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of blissful vision on my pathway rough,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have seen much, and trust the perfect more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While to his feet my faith crosses the wayless dark.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Faith is the human shadow of thy might.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art the one self-perfect life, and we",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who trust thy life, therein join on to thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Taking our part in self-creating light.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To trust is to step forward out of the night⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be⁠—to share in the outgoing Will",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That lives and is, because outgoing still.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am lost before thee, Father! yet I will",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Claim of thee my birthright ineffable.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou lay’st it on me, son, to claim thee, sire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To that which thou hast made me, I aspire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To thee, the sun, upflames thy kindled fire.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No man presumes in that to which he was born;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Less than the gift to claim, would be the giver to scorn.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Henceforth all things thy dealings are with me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For out of thee is nothing, or can be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all things are to draw us home to thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What matter that the knowers scoffing say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“This is old folly, plain to the new day”?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If thou be such as thou, and they as they,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unto thy Let there be, they still must answer Nay.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "They will not, therefore cannot, do not know him.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nothing they could know, could be God. In sooth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unto the true alone exists the truth.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They say well, saying Nature doth not show him:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Truly she shows not what she cannot show;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And they deny the thing they cannot know.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who sees a glory, towards it will go.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Faster no step moves God because the fool",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shouts to the universe God there is none;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The blindest man will not preach out the sun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though on his darkness he should found a school.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It may be, when he finds he is not dead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though world and body, sight and sound are fled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some eyes may open in his foolish head.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "When I am very weary with hard thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And yet the question burns and is not quenched,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My heart grows cool when to remembrance wrought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That thou who know’st the light-born answer sought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Know’st too the dark where the doubt lies entrenched⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Know’st with what seemings I am sore perplexed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that with thee I wait, nor needs my soul be vexed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Who sets himself not sternly to be good,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is but a fool, who judgment of true things",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has none, however oft the claim renewed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he who thinks, in his great plenitude,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To right himself, and set his spirit free,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Without the might of higher communings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is foolish also⁠—save he willed himself to be.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "How many helps thou giv’st to those would learn!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To some sore pain, to others a sinking heart;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To some a weariness worse than any smart;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To some a haunting, fearing, blind concern;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Madness to some; to some the shaking dart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of hideous death still following as they turn;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To some a hunger that will not depart.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To some thou giv’st a deep unrest⁠—a scorn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of all they are or see upon the earth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A gaze, at dusky night and clearing morn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As on a land of emptiness and dearth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To some a bitter sorrow; to some the sting",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of love misprized⁠—of sick abandoning;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To some a frozen heart, oh, worse than anything!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To some a mocking demon, that doth set",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The poor foiled will to scoff at the ideal,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But loathsome makes to them their life of jar.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The messengers of Satan think to mar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But make⁠—driving the soul from false to feal⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To thee, the reconciler, the one real,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In whom alone the would be and the is are met.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Me thou hast given an infinite unrest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A hunger⁠—not at first after known good,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But something vague I knew not, and yet would⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The veiled Isis, thy will not understood;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A conscience tossing ever in my breast;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And something deeper, that will not be expressed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Save as the Spirit thinking in the Spirit’s brood.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But now the Spirit and I are one in this⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My hunger now is after righteousness;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My spirit hopes in God to set me free",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the low self loathed of the higher me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Great elder brother of my second birth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dear o’er all names but one, in heaven or earth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Teach me all day to love eternally.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lo, Lord, thou know’st, I would not anything",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That in the heart of God holds not its root;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor falsely deem there is any life at all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That doth in him nor sleep nor shine nor sing;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I know the plants that bear the noisome fruit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of burning and of ashes and of gall⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From God’s heart torn, rootless to man’s they cling.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Life-giving love rots to devouring fire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Justice corrupts to despicable revenge;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Motherhood chokes in the dam’s jealous mire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hunger for growth turns fluctuating change;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love’s anger grand grows spiteful human wrath,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hunting men out of conscience’ holy path;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And human kindness takes the tattler’s range.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Nothing can draw the heart of man but good;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Low good it is that draws him from the higher⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So evil⁠—poison uncreate from food.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Never a foul thing, with temptation dire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tempts hellward force created to aspire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But walks in wronged strength of imprisoned Truth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose mantle also oft the Shame indu’th.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Love in the prime not yet I understand⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Scarce know the love that loveth at first hand:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Help me my selfishness to scatter and scout;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blow on me till my love loves burningly;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then the great love will burn the mean self out,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I, in glorious simplicity,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Living by love, shall love unspeakably.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Oh, make my anger pure⁠—let no worst wrong",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rouse in me the old niggard selfishness.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Give me thine indignation⁠—which is love",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Turned on the evil that would part love’s throng;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy anger scathes because it needs must bless,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gathering into union calm and strong",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All things on earth, and under, and above.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Make my forgiveness downright⁠—such as I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should perish if I did not have from thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I let the wrong go, withered up and dry,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cursed with divine forgetfulness in me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis but self-pity, pleasant, mean, and sly,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Low whispering bids the paltry memory live:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What am I brother for, but to forgive!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Thou art my father’s child⁠—come to my heart:”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus must I say, or Thou must say, “Depart;”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus I would say⁠—I would be as thou art;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus I must say, or still I work athwart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The absolute necessity and law",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That dwells in me, and will me asunder draw,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If in obedience I leave any flaw.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord, I forgive⁠—and step in unto thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I have enemies, Christ deal with them:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He hath forgiven me and Jerusalem.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, set me from self-inspiration free,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And let me live and think from thee, not me⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rather, from deepest me then think and feel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At centre of thought’s swift-revolving wheel.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I sit o’ercanopied with Beauty’s tent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through which flies many a golden-winged dove,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well watched of Fancy’s tender eyes up bent;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A hundred Powers wait on me, ministering;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A thousand treasures Art and Knowledge bring;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will, Conscience, Reason tower the rest above;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But in the midst, alone, I gladness am and love.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis but a vision, Lord; I do not mean",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That thus I am, or have one moment been⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis but a picture hung upon my wall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To measure dull contentment therewithal,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And know behind the human how I fall;⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A vision true, of what one day shall be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When thou hast had thy very will with me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Alas, my tent! see through it a whirlwind sweep!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Moaning, poor Fancy’s doves are swept away.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I sit alone, a sorrow half asleep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My consciousness the blackness all astir.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No pilgrim I, a homeless wanderer⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For how canst Thou be in the darkness deep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who dwellest only in the living day?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It must be, somewhere in my fluttering tent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strange creatures, half tamed only yet, are pent⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dragons, lop-winged birds, and large-eyed snakes!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hark! through the storm the saddest howling breaks!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or are they loose, roaming about the bent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The darkness dire deepening with moan and scream?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My Morning, rise, and all shall be a dream.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Not thine, my Lord, the darkness all is mine⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Save that, as mine, my darkness too is thine:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All things are thine to save or to destroy⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Destroy my darkness, rise my perfect joy;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love primal, the live coal of every night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flame out, scare the ill things with radiant fright,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fill my tent with laughing morn’s delight.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Master, thou workest with such common things⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Low souls, weak hearts, I mean⁠—and hast to use,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore, such common means and rescuings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That hard we find it, as we sit and muse,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To think thou workest in us verily:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bad sea-boats we, and manned with wretched crews⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That doubt the captain, watch the storm-spray flee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou art hampered in thy natural working then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When beings designed on freedom’s holy plan",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will not be free: with thy poor, foolish men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou therefore hast to work just like a man.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But when, tangling thyself in their sore need,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou hast to freedom fashioned them indeed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then wilt thou grandly move, and Godlike speed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Will this not then show grandest fact of all⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In thy creation victory most renowned⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That thou hast wrought thy will by slow and small,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And made men like thee, though thy making bound",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By that which they were not, and could not be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until thou mad’st them make along with thee?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Master, the tardiness is but in me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Hence come thy checks⁠—because I still would run",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My head into the sand, nor flutter aloft",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Towards thy home, with thy wind under me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis because I am mean, thy ways so oft",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Look mean to me; my rise is low begun;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But scarce thy will doth grasp me, ere I see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For my arrest and rise, its stern necessity.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Like clogs upon the pinions of thy plan",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We hang⁠—like captives on thy chariot-wheels,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who should climb up and ride with Death’s conqueror;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore thy train along the world’s highway steals",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So slow to the peace of heart-reluctant man.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What shall we do to spread the wing and soar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor straiten thy deliverance any more?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The sole way to put flight into the wing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To preen its feathers, and to make them grow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is to heed humbly every smallest thing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With which the Christ in us has aught to do.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So will the Christ from child to manhood go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Obedient to the father Christ, and so",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sweet holy change will turn all our old things to new.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Creation thou dost work by faint degrees,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By shade and shadow from unseen beginning;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Far, far apart, in unthought mysteries",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of thy own dark, unfathomable seas,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou will’st thy will; and thence, upon the earth⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Slow travelling, his way through centuries winning⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A child at length arrives at never ending birth.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Well mayst thou then work on indocile hearts",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By small successes, disappointments small;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By nature, weather, failure, or sore fall;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By shame, anxiety, bitterness, and smarts;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By loneliness, by weary loss of zest:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The rags, the husks, the swine, the hunger-quest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Drive home the wanderer to the father’s breast.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "How suddenly some rapid turn of thought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May throw the life-machine all out of gear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Clouding the windows with the steam of doubt,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Filling the eyes with dust, with noise the ear!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who knows not then where dwells the engineer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rushes aghast into the pathless night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wanders in a land of dreary fright.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Amazed at sightless whirring of their wheels,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Confounded with the recklessness and strife,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Distract with fears of what may next ensue,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some break rude exit from the house of life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And plunge into a silence out of view⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whence not a cry, no wafture once reveals",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What door they have broke open with the knife.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Help me, my Father, in whatever dismay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whatever terror in whatever shape,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To hold the faster by thy garment’s hem;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When my heart sinks, oh, lift it up, I pray;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy child should never fear though hell should gape,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not blench though all the ills that men affray",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stood round him like the Roman round Jerusalem.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Too eager I must not be to understand.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How should the work the master goes about",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fit the vague sketch my compasses have planned?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am his house⁠—for him to go in and out.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He builds me now⁠—and if I cannot see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At any time what he is doing with me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis that he makes the house for me too grand.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The house is not for me⁠—it is for him.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His royal thoughts require many a stair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Many a tower, many an outlook fair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of which I have no thought, and need no care.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where I am most perplexed, it may be there",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou mak’st a secret chamber, holy-dim,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where thou wilt come to help my deepest prayer.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I cannot tell why this day I am ill;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I am well because it is thy will⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which is to make me pure and right like thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not yet I need escape⁠—’tis bearable",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because thou knowest. And when harder things",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall rise and gather, and overshadow me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall have comfort in thy strengthenings.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "How do I live when thou art far away?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I am sunk, and lost, and dead in sleep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or in some dream with no sense in its play?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When weary-dull, or drowned in study deep?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O Lord, I live so utterly on thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I live when I forget thee utterly⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not that thou thinkest of, but thinkest me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou far!⁠—that word the holy truth doth blur.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Doth the great ocean from the small fish run",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When it sleeps fast in its low weedy bower?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is the sun far from any smallest flower,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That lives by his dear presence every hour?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are they not one in oneness without stir⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The flower the flower because the sun the sun?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Dear presence every hour”!⁠—what of the night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When crumpled daisies shut gold sadness in;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And some do hang the head for lack of light,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sick almost unto death with absence-blight?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy memory then, warm-lingering in the ground,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mourned dewy in the air, keeps their hearts sound,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till fresh with day their lapsed life begin.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "All things are shadows of the shining true:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sun, sea, and air⁠—close, potent, hurtless fire⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flowers from their mother’s prison⁠—dove, and dew⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Every thing holds a slender guiding clue",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Back to the mighty oneness:⁠—hearts of faith",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Know thee than light, than heat, endlessly nigher,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our life’s life, carpenter of Nazareth.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Sometimes, perhaps, the spiritual blood runs slow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And soft along the veins of will doth flow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Seeking God’s arteries from which it came.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or does the etherial, creative flame",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Turn back upon itself, and latent grow?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It matters not what figure or what name,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If thou art in me, and I am not to blame.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "In such God-silence, the soul’s nest, so long",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As all is still, no flutter and no song,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is safe. But if my soul begin to act",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Without some waking to the eternal fact",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That my dear life is hid with Christ in God⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I think and move a creature of earth’s clod,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stand on the finite, act upon the wrong.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My soul this sermon hence for itself prepares:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Then is there nothing vile thou mayst not do,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Buffeted in a tumult of low cares,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And treacheries of the old man ’gainst the new.”⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, in my spirit let thy spirit move,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Warning, that it may not have to reprove:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In my dead moments, master, stir the prayers.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord, let my soul o’erburdened then feel thee",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thrilling through all its brain’s stupidity.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I must slumber, heedless of ill harms,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let it not be but in my Father’s arms;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Outside the shelter of his garment’s fold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All is a waste, a terror-haunted wold.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, keep me. ’Tis thy child that cries. Behold.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Some say that thou their endless love host won",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By deeds for them which I may not believe",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou ever didst, or ever willedst done:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What matter, so they love thee? They receive",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eternal more than the poor loom and wheel",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of their invention ever wove and spun.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I love thee for I must, thine all from head to heel.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The love of thee will set all notions right.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Right save by love no thought can be or may;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only love’s knowledge is the primal light.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Questions keep camp along love’s shining coast⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Challenge my love and would my entrance stay:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Across the buzzing, doubting, challenging host,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I rush to thee, and cling, and cry⁠—Thou know’st.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Oh, let me live in thy realities,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor substitute my notions for thy facts,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Notion with notion making leagues and pacts;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They are to truth but as dream-deeds to acts,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And questioned, make me doubt of everything.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“O Lord, my God,” my heart gets up and cries,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Come thy own self, and with thee my faith bring.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O master, my desires to work, to know,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be aware that I do live and grow⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All restless wish for anything not thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I yield, and on thy altar offer me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let me no more from out thy presence go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But keep me waiting watchful for thy will⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even while I do it, waiting watchful still.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou art the Lord of life, the secret thing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou wilt give endless more than I could find,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even if without thee I could go and seek;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For thou art one, Christ, with my deepest mind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Duty alive, self-willed, in me dost speak,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to a deeper purer being sting:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I come to thee, my life, my causing kind.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Nothing is alien in thy world immense⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No look of sky or earth or man or beast;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“In the great hand of God I stand, and thence”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Look out on life, his endless, holy feast.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To try to feel is but to court despair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To dig for a sun within a garden-fence:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who does thy will, O God, he lives upon thy air.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So shall abundant entrance me be given",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into the truth, my life’s inheritance.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lo! as the sun shoots straight from out his tomb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God-floated, casting round a lordly glance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into the corners of his endless room,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, through the rent which thou, O Christ, hast riven,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I enter liberty’s divine expanse.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It will be so⁠—ah, so it is not now!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who seeks thee for a little lazy peace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then, like a man all weary of the plough,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That leaves it standing in the furrow’s crease,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Turns from thy presence for a foolish while,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till comes again the rasp of unrest’s file,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From liberty is distant many a mile.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Like one that stops, and drinks, and turns, and goes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into a land where never water flows,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There travels on, the dry and thirsty day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until the hot night veils the farther way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then turns and finds again the bubbling pool⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here would I build my house, take up my stay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor ever leave my Sychar’s margin cool.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Keep me, Lord, with thee. I call from out the dark⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hear in thy light, of which I am a spark.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I know not what is mine and what is thine⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of branch and stem I miss the differing mark⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But if a mere hair’s-breadth me separateth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That hair’s-breadth is eternal, infinite death.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For sap thy dead branch calls, O living vine!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I have no choice, I must do what I can;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But thou dost me, and all things else as well;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou wilt take care thy child shall grow a man.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rouse thee, my faith; be king; with life be one;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To trust in God is action’s highest kind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who trusts in God, his heart with life doth swell;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Faith opens all the windows to God’s wind.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O Father, thou art my eternity.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not on the clasp Of consciousness⁠—on thee",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My life depends; and I can well afford",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All to forget, so thou remember, Lord.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In thee I rest; in sleep thou dost me fold;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In thee I labour; still in thee, grow old;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And dying, shall I not in thee, my Life, be bold?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "In holy things may be unholy greed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou giv’st a glimpse of many a lovely thing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not to be stored for use in any mind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But only for the present spiritual need.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The holiest bread, if hoarded, soon will breed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The mammon-moth, the having-pride, I find.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis momently thy heart gives out heart-quickening.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It is thyself, and neither this nor that,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor anything, told, taught, or dreamed of thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That keeps us live. The holy maid who sat",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Low at thy feet, choosing the better part,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rising, bore with her⁠—what a memory!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet, brooding only on that treasure, she",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had soon been roused by conscious loss of heart.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am a fool when I would stop and think,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lest I lose my thoughts, from duty shrink.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is but avarice in another shape.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis as the vine-branch were to hoard the grape,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor trust the living root beneath the sod.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What trouble is that child to thee, my God,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who sips thy gracious cup, and will not drink!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "True, faithful action only is the life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The grapes for which we feel the pruning knife.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thoughts are but leaves; they fall and feed the ground.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The holy seasons, swift and slow, go round;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The ministering leaves return, fresh, large, and rife⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But fresher, larger, more thoughts to the brain:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Farewell, my dove!⁠—come back, hope-laden, through the rain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Well may this body poorer, feebler grow!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is undressing for its last sweet bed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But why should the soul, which death shall never know,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Authority, and power, and memory shed?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is that love with absolute faith would wed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God takes the inmost garments off his child,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To have him in his arms, naked and undefiled.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou art my knowledge and my memory,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No less than my real, deeper life, my love.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will not fool, degrade myself to trust",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In less than that which maketh me say Me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In less than that causing itself to be.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then art within me, behind, beneath, above⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will be thine because I may and must.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou art the truth, the life. Thou, Lord, wilt see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To every question that perplexes me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am thy being; and my dignity",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is written with my name down in thy book;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou wilt care for it. Never shall I think",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of anything that thou mightst overlook:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In faith-born triumph at thy feet I sink.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou carest more for that which I call mine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In same sort⁠—better manner than I could,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even if I knew creation’s ends divine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rousing in me this vague desire of good.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art more to me than my desires’ whole brood;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art the only person, and I cry",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unto the father I of this my I.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou who inspirest prayer, then bend’st thine ear;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It, crying with love’s grand respect to hear!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I cannot give myself to thee aright⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With the triumphant uttermost of gift;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That cannot be till I am full of light⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To perfect deed a perfect will must lift:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Inspire, possess, compel me, first of every might.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I do not wonder men can ill believe",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who make poor claims upon thee, perfect Lord;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then most I trust when most I would receive.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I wonder not that such do pray and grieve⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The God they think, to be God is not fit.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then only in thy glory I seem to sit,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When my heart claims from thine an infinite accord.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "More life I need ere I myself can be.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes, when the eternal tide ebbs low,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A moment weary of my life I grow⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Weary of my existence’ self, I mean,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not of its plodding, not its wind and snow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then to thy knee trusting I turn, and lean:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou will’st I live, and I do will with thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Dost thou mean sometimes that we should forget thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dropping the veil of things ’twixt thee and us?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah, not that we should lose thee and regret thee!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But that, we turning from our windows thus,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The frost-fixed God should vanish from the pane,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sun-melted, and a moment, Father, let thee",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Look like thyself straight into heart and brain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For sometimes when I am busy among men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With heart and brain an open thoroughfare",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For faces, words, and thoughts other than mine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And a pause comes at length⁠—oh, sudden then,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Back throbs the tide with rush exultant rare;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And for a gentle moment I divine",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy dawning presence flush my tremulous air.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If I have to forget thee, do thou see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It be a good, not bad forgetfulness;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That all its mellow, truthful air be free",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From dusty noes, and soft with many a yes;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That as thy breath my life, my life may be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Man’s breath. So when thou com’st at hour unknown,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou shalt find nothing in me but thine own.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou being in me, in my deepest me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through all the time I do not think of thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall I not grow at last so true within",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As to forget thee and yet never sin?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall I not walk the loud world’s busy way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet in thy palace-porch sit all the day?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not conscious think of thee, yet never from thee stray?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Forget!⁠—Oh, must it be?⁠—Would it were rather",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That every sense was so filled with my father",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That not in anything could I forget him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But deepest, highest must in all things set him!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet if thou think in me, God, what great matter",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though my poor thought to former break and latter⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As now my best thoughts; break, before thee foiled, and scatter!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Some way there must be of my not forgetting,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thither thou art leading me, my God.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The child that, weary of his mother’s petting,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Runs out the moment that his feet are shod,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May see her face in every flower he sees,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And she, although beyond the window sitting,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be nearer him than when he sat upon her knees.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What if, when I at last, at the long last,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall see thy face, my Lord, my life’s delight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It should not be the face that hath been glassed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In poor imagination’s mirror slight!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will my soul sink, and shall I stand aghast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beggared of hope, my heart a conscious blight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Amazed and lost⁠—death’s bitterness come and not passed?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ah, no! for from thy heart the love will press,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And shining from thy perfect human face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will sink into me like the father’s kiss;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And deepening wide the gulf of consciousness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond imagination’s lowest abyss,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will, with the potency of creative grace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord it throughout the larger thinking place.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thus God-possessed, new born, ah, not for long",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should I the sight behold, beatified,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Know it creating in me, feel the throng",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of speechless hopes out-throbbing like a tide,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And my heart rushing, borne aloft the flood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To offer at his feet its living blood⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ere, glory-hid, the other face I spied.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For out imagination is, in small,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And with the making-difference that must be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mirror of God’s creating mirror; all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That shows itself therein, that formeth he,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And there is Christ, no bodiless vanity,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though, face to face, the mighty perfectness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With glory blurs the dim-reflected less.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I clasp thy feet, O father of the living!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou wilt not let my fluttering hopes be more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or lovelier, or greater, than thy giving!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Surely thy ships will bring to my poor shore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of gold and peacocks such a shining store",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As will laugh all the dreams to holy scorn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of love and sorrow that were ever born.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Sometimes it seems pure natural to trust,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And trust right largely, grandly, infinitely,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Daring the splendour of the giver’s part;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At other times, the whole earth is but dust,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sky is dust, yea, dust the human heart;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then art thou nowhere, there is no room for thee",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the great dust-heap of eternity.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But why should it be possible to mistrust⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor possible only, but its opposite hard?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why should not man believe because he must⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By sight’s compulsion? Why should he be scarred",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With conflict? worn with doubting fine and long?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No man is fit for heaven’s musician throng",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who has not tuned an instrument all shook and jarred.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Therefore, O Lord, when all things common seem,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When all is dust, and self the centre clod,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When grandeur is a hopeless, foolish dream,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And anxious care more reasonable than God⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out of the ashes I will call to thee⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In spite of dead distrust call earnestly:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh thou who livest, call, then answer dying me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We are a shadow and a shining, we!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One moment nothing seems but what we see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor aught to rule but common circumstance⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nought is to seek but praise, to shun but chance;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A moment more, and God is all in all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And not a sparrow from its nest can fall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But from the ground its chirp goes up into his hall.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I know at least which is the better mood.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When on a heap of cares I sit and brood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like Job upon his ashes, sorely vext,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I feel a lower thing than when I stood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The world’s true heir, fearless as, on its stalk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A lily meeting Jesus in his walk:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am not all mood⁠—I can judge betwixt.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Such differing moods can scarce to one belong;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall the same fountain sweet and bitter yield?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall what bore late the dust-mood, think and brood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till it bring forth the great believing mood?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or that which bore the grand mood, bald and peeled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sit down to croon the shabby sensual song,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To hug itself, and sink from wrong to meaner wrong?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "In the low mood, the mere man acts alone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Moved by impulses which, if from within,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet far outside the centre man begin;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But in the grand mood, every softest tone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Comes from the living God at very heart⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From thee who infinite core of being art,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thee who didst call our names ere ever we could sin.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There is a coward sparing in the heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Offspring of penury and low-born fear:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Prayer must take heed nor overdo its part,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Asking too much of him with open ear!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sinners must wait, not seek the very best,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cry out for peace, and be of middling cheer:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "False heart! thou cheatest God, and dost thy life molest.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou hungerest not, thou thirstest not enough.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art a temporizing thing, mean heart.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Down-drawn, thou pick’st up straws and wretched stuff,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stooping as if the world’s floor were the chart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the long way thy lazy feet must tread.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou dreamest of the crown hung o’er thy head⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But that is safe⁠—thou gatherest hairs and fluff!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Man’s highest action is to reach up higher,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stir up himself to take hold of his sire.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then best I love you, dearest, when I go",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And cry to love’s life I may love you so",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As to content the yearning, making love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That perfects strength divine in weakness’ fire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And from the broken pots calls out the silver dove.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Poor am I, God knows, poor as withered leaf;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Poorer or richer than, I dare not ask.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To love aright, for me were hopeless task,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eternities too high to comprehend.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But shall I tear my heart in hopeless grief,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or rise and climb, and run and kneel, and bend,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And drink the primal love⁠—so love in chief?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then love shall wake and be its own high life.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then shall I know ’tis I that love indeed⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ready, without a moment’s questioning strife,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be forgot, like bursting water-bead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the high good of the eternal dear;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All hope, all claim, resting, with spirit clear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon the living love that every love doth breed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ever seem to fail in utterance.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes amid the swift melodious dance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of fluttering words⁠—as if it had not been,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The thought has melted, vanished into night;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes I say a thing I did not mean,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lo! ’tis better, by thy ordered chance,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than what eluded me, floating too feathery light.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If thou wouldst have me speak, Lord, give me speech.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So many cries are uttered now-a-days,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That scarce a song, however clear and true,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will thread the jostling tumult safe, and reach",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The ears of men buz-filled with poor denays:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Barb thou my words with light, make my song new,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And men will hear, or when I sing or preach.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Can anything go wrong with me? I ask⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the same moment, at a sudden pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stand trembling. Up from the great river’s brim",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Comes a cold breath; the farther bank is dim;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The heaven is black with clouds and coming rain;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "High soaring faith is grown a heavy task,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all is wrong with weary heart and brain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Things do go wrong. I know grief, pain, and fear.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see them lord it sore and wide around.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From her fair twilight answers Truth, star-crowned,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Things wrong are needful where wrong things abound.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Things go not wrong; but Pain, with dog and spear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "False faith from human hearts will hunt and hound.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The earth shall quake ’neath them that trust the solid ground.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Things go not wrong when sudden I fall prone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But when I snatch my upheld hand from thine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, proud or careless, think to walk alone.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then things go wrong, when I, poor, silly sheep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To shelves and pits from the good pasture creep;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not when the shepherd leaves the ninety and nine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to the mountains goes, after the foolish one.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lo! now thy swift dogs, over stone and bush,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After me, straying sheep, loud barking, rush.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There’s Fear, and Shame, and Empty-heart, and Lack,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Lost-love, and a thousand at their back!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see thee not, but know thou hound’st them on,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I am lost indeed⁠—escape is none.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "See! there they come, down streaming on my track!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I rise and run, staggering⁠—double and run.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But whither?⁠—whither?⁠—whither for escape?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sea lies all about this long-necked cape⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There come the dogs, straight for me every one⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Me, live despair, live centre of alarms!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah! lo! ’twixt me and all his barking harms,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The shepherd, lo!⁠—I run⁠—fall folded in his arms.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There let the dogs yelp, let them growl and leap;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is no matter⁠—I will go to sleep.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a spent cloud pass pain and grief and fear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out from behind it unchanged love shines clear.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, save me, Christ!⁠—I know not what I am,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was thy stupid, self-willed, greedy lamb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would be thy honest and obedient sheep.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Why is it that so often I return",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From social converse with a spirit worn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A lack, a disappointment⁠—even a sting",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of shame, as for some low, unworthy thing?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because I have not, careful, first of all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Set my door open wide, back to the wall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ere I at others’ doors did knock and call.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet more and more of me thou dost demand;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My faith and hope in God alone shall stand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The life of law⁠—not trust the rain and sun",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To draw the golden harvest o’er the land.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I must not say⁠—“This too will pass and die,”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“The wind will change,” “Round will the seasons run.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Law is the body of will, of conscious harmony.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Who trusts a law, might worship a god of wood;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Half his soul slumbers, if it be not dead.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He is a live thing shut in chaos crude,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hemmed in with dragons⁠—a remorseless head",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still hanging over its uplifted eyes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No; God is all in all, and nowhere dies⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The present heart and thinking will of good.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Law is our schoolmaster. Our master, Christ,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lived under all our laws, yet always prayed⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So walked the water when the storm was highest.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Law is Thy father’s; thou hast it obeyed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And it thereby subject to thee hast made⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To rule it, master, for thy brethren’s sakes:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well may he guide the law by whom law’s maker makes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Death haunts our souls with dissolution’s strife;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Soaks them with unrest; makes our every breath",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A throe, not action; from God’s purest gift",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wipes off the bloom; and on the harp of faith",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its fretted strings doth slacken still and shift:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Life everywhere, perfect, and always life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is sole redemption from this haunting death.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "God, thou from death dost lift me. As I rise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its Lethe from my garment drips and flows.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ere long I shall be safe in upper air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With thee, my life⁠—with thee, my answered prayer",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where thou art God in every wind that blows,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And self alone, and ever, softly dies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There shall my being blossom, and I know it fair.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I would dig, Master, in no field but thine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would build my house only upon thy rock,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet am but a dull day, with a sea-sheen!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why should I wonder then that they should mock,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who, in the limbo of things heard and seen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hither and thither blowing, lose the shine",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of every light that hangs in the firmament divine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord, loosen in me the hold of visible things;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Help me to walk by faith and not by sight;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I would, through thickest veils and coverings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "See into the chambers of the living light.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, in the land of things that swell and seem,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Help me to walk by the other light supreme,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which shows thy facts behind man’s vaguely hinting dream.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I see a little child whose eager hands",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Search the thick stream that drains the crowded street",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For possible things hid in its current slow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Near by, behind him, a great palace stands,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where kings might welcome nobles to their feet.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Soft sounds, sweet scents, fair sights there only go⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There the child’s father lives, but the child does not know.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "On, eager, hungry, busy-seeking child,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rise up, turn round, run in, run up the stair.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Far in a chamber from rude noise exiled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy father sits, pondering how thou dost fare.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The mighty man will clasp thee to his breast:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will kiss thee, stroke the tangles of thy hair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lap thee warm in fold on fold of lovely rest.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The prince of this world came, and nothing found",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In thee, O master; but, ah, woe is me!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He cannot pass me, on other business bound,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, spying in me things familiar, he",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Casts over me the shadow of his flight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And straight I moan in darkness⁠—and the fight",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Begins afresh betwixt the world and thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "In my own heart, O master, in my thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Betwixt the woolly sheep and hairy goat",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not clearly I distinguish; but I think",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou knowest that I fight upon thy side.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The how I am ashamed of; for I shrink",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From many a blow⁠—am borne on the battle-tide,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I should rush to the front, and take thy foe by the throat.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The enemy still hath many things in me;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yea, many an evil nest with open hole",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gapes out to him, at which he enters free.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, like the impact of a burning coal,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His presence mere straight rouses the garrison,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all are up in arms, and down on knee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fighting and praying till the foe is gone.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Remember, Lord, thou hast not made me good.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or if thou didst, it was so long ago",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have forgotten⁠—and never understood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I humbly think. At best it was a crude,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A rough-hewn goodness, that did need this woe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This sin, these harms of all kinds fierce and rude,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To shape it out, making it live and grow.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But thou art making me, I thank thee, sire.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What thou hast done and doest thou know’st well,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I will help thee:⁠—gently in thy fire",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will lie burning; on thy potter’s-wheel",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will whirl patient, though my brain should reel;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy grace shall be enough the grief to quell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And growing strength perfect through weakness dire.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I have not knowledge, wisdom, insight, thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor understanding, fit to justify",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thee in thy work, O Perfect. Thou hast brought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Me up to this⁠—and, lo! what thou hast wrought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I cannot call it good. But I can cry⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“O enemy, the maker hath not done;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One day thou shalt behold, and from the sight wilt run.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The faith I will, aside is easily bent;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But of thy love, my God, one glimpse alone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can make me absolutely confident⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With faith, hope, joy, in love responsive blent.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My soul then, in the vision mighty grown,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its father and its fate securely known,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Falls on thy bosom with exultant moan.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou workest perfectly. And if it seem",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some things are not so well, ’tis but because",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They are too loving-deep, too lofty-wise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For me, poor child, to understand their laws:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My highest wisdom half is but a dream;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My love runs helpless like a falling stream:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy good embraces ill, and lo! its illness dies!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "From sleep I wake, and wake to think of thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But wherefore not with sudden glorious glee?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why burst not gracious on me heaven and earth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In all the splendour of a new-day-birth?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why hangs a cloud betwixt my lord and me?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The moment that my eyes the morning greet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My soul should panting rush to clasp thy father-feet.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Is it because it is not thou I see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But only my poor, blotted fancy of thee?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh! never till thyself reveal thy face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall I be flooded with life’s vital grace.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh make my mirror-heart thy shining-place,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then my soul, awaking with the morn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall be a waking joy, eternally new-born.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord, in my silver is much metal base,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Else should my being by this time have shown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thee thy own self therein. Therefore do I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wake in the furnace. I know thou sittest by,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Refining⁠—look, keep looking in to try",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy silver; master, look and see thy face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Else here I lie for ever, blank as any stone.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But when in the dim silver thou dost look,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I do behold thy face, though blurred and faint.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh joy! no flaw in me thy grace will brook,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But still refine: slow shall the silver pass",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From bright to brighter, till, sans spot or taint,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love, well content, shall see no speck of brass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I his perfect face shall hold as in a glass.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "With every morn my life afresh must break",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The crust of self, gathered about me fresh;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The spider-devils spin out of the flesh⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eager to net the soul before it wake,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis that I am not good⁠—that is enough;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I pry no farther⁠—that is not the way.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here, O my potter, is thy making stuff!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Set thy wheel going; let it whir and play.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The chips in me, the stones, the straws, the sand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cast them out with fine separating hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And make a vessel of thy yielding clay.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What if it take a thousand years to make me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So me he leave not, angry, on the floor!⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nay, thou art never angry!⁠—that would break me!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would I tried never thy dear patience sore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But were as good as thou couldst well expect me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whilst thou dost make, I mar, and thou correct me!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then were I now content, waiting for something more.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Only, my God, see thou that I content thee⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, take thy own content upon me, God!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah, never, never, sure, wilt thou repent thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That thou hast called thy Adam from the clod!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet must I mourn that thou shouldst ever find me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One moment sluggish, needing more of the rod",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than thou didst think when thy desire designed me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My God, it troubles me I am not better.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More help, I pray, still more. Thy perfect debtor",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall be when thy perfect child I am grown.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My Father, help me⁠—am I not thine own?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lo, other lords have had dominion o’er me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But now thy will alone I set before me:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy own heart’s life⁠—Lord, thou wilt not abhor me!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "In youth, when once again I had set out",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To find thee, Lord, my life, my liberty,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A window now and then, clouds all about,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would open into heaven: my heart forlorn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "First all would tremble with a solemn glee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then, whelmed in peace, rest like a man outworn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That sees the dawn slow part the closed lids of the morn.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now I grow old, and the soft-gathered years",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Have calmed, yea dulled the heart’s swift fluttering beat;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But a quiet hope that keeps its household seat",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is better than recurrent glories fleet.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To know thee, Lord, is worth a many tears;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And when this mildew, age, has dried away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My heart will beat again as young and strong and gay.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Stronger and gayer tenfold!⁠—but, O friends,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not for itself, nor any hoarded bliss.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see but vaguely whither my being tends,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All vaguely spy a glory shadow-blent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Vaguely desire the “individual kiss;”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But when I think of God, a large content",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fills the dull air of my gray cloudy tent.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Father of me, thou art my bliss secure.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Make of me, maker, whatsoe’er thou wilt.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let fancy’s wings hang moulting, hope grow poor,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And doubt steam up from where a joy was spilt⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I lose no time to reason it plain and clear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But fly to thee, my life’s perfection dear:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not what I think, but what thou art, makes sure.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This utterance of spirit through still thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This forming of heart-stuff in moulds of brain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is helpful to the soul by which ’tis wrought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The shape reacting on the heart again;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But when I am quite old, and words are slow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like dying things that keep their holes for woe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And memory’s withering tendrils clasp with effort vain?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou, then as now, no less wilt be my life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I shall know it better than before,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Praying and trusting, hoping, claiming more.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From effort vain, sick foil, and bootless strife,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall, with childness fresh, look up to thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou, seeing thy child with age encumbered sore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wilt round him bend thine arm more carefully.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And when grim Death doth take me by the throat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou wilt have pity on thy handiwork;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou wilt not let him on my suffering gloat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But draw my soul out⁠—gladder than man or boy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When thy saved creatures from the narrow ark",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rushed out, and leaped and laughed and cried for joy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the great rainbow strode across the dark.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Against my fears, my doubts, my ignorance,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I trust in thee, O father of my Lord!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The world went on in this same broken dance,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When, worn and mocked, he trusted and adored:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I too will trust, and gather my poor best",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To face the truth-faced false. So in his nest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall awake at length, a little scarred and scored.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Things cannot look all right so long as I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Am not all right who see⁠—therefore not right",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can see. The lamp within sends out the light",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which shows the things; and if its rays go wry,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or are not white, they must part show a lie.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The man, half-cured, did men not trees conclude,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because he moving saw what else had seemed a wood.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Give me, take from me, as thou wilt. I learn⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Slowly and stubbornly I learn to yield",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a strange hopefulness. As from the field",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of hard-fought battle won, the victor chief",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Turns thankfully, although his heart do yearn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So from my old things to thy new I turn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With sad, thee-trusting heart, and not in grief.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If with my father I did wander free,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Floating o’er hill and field where’er we would,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, lighting on the sward before the door,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strange faces through the window-panes should see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And strange feet standing where the loved had stood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The dear old place theirs all, as ours before⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should I be sorrowful, father, having thee?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So, Lord, if thou tak’st from me all the rest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thyself with each resumption drawing nigher,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It shall but hurt me as the thorn of the briar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I reach to the pale flower in its breast.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To have thee, Lord, is to have all thy best,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Holding it by its very life divine⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To let my friend’s hand go, and take his heart in mine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Take from me leisure, all familiar places;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take all the lovely things of earth and air",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take from me books; take all my precious faces;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take words melodious, and their songful linking;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take scents, and sounds, and all thy outsides fair;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Draw nearer, taking, and, to my sober thinking,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou bring’st them nearer all, and ready to my prayer.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "No place on earth henceforth I shall count strange,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For every place belongeth to my Christ.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will go calm where’er thou bid’st me range;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whoe’er my neighbour, thou art still my nighest.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh my heart’s life, my owner, will of my being!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into my soul thou every moment diest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In thee my life thus evermore decreeing.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What though things change and pass, nor come again!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou, the life-heart of all things, changest never.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sun shines on; the fair clouds turn to rain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And glad the earth with many a spring and river.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hearts that answer change with chill and shiver,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That mourn the past, sad-sick, with hopeless pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They know not thee, our changeless heart and brain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My halting words will some day turn to song⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some far-off day, in holy other times!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The melody now prisoned in my rimes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will one day break aloft, and from the throng",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of wrestling thoughts and words spring up the air;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As from the flower its colour’s sweet despair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Issues in odour, and the sky’s low levels climbs.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My surgent thought shoots lark-like up to thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou like the heaven art all about the lark.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whatever I surmise or know in me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Idea, or but symbol on the dark,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is living, working, thought-creating power",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In thee, the timeless father of the hour.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am thy book, thy song⁠—thy child would be.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou art of this world, Christ. Thou know’st it all;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou know’st our evens, our morns, our red and gray;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How moons, and hearts, and seasons rise and fall;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How we grow weary plodding on the way;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of future joy how present pain bereaves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rounding us with a dark of mere decay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tossed with a drift Of summer-fallen leaves.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou knowest all our weeping, fainting, striving;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou know’st how very hard it is to be;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How hard to rouse faint will not yet reviving;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To do the pure thing, trusting all to thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To hold thou art there, for all no face we see;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How hard to think, through cold and dark and dearth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That thou art nearer now than when eye-seen on earth.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Have pity on us for the look of things,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When blank denial stares us in the face.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Although the serpent mask have lied before,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It fascinates the bird that darkling sings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And numbs the little prayer-bird’s beating wings.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For how believe thee somewhere in blank space,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If through the darkness come no knocking to our door?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If we might sit until the darkness go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Possess our souls in patience perhaps we might;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But there is always something to be done,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And no heart left to do it. To and fro",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The dull thought surges, as the driven waves fight",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In gulfy channels. Oh! victorious one,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Give strength to rise, go out, and meet thee in the night.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Wake, thou that sleepest; rise up from the dead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Christ will give thee light.” I do not know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What sleep is, what is death, or what is light;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I am waked enough to feel a woe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To rise and leave death. Stumbling through the night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To my dim lattice, O calling Christ! I go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And out into the dark look for thy star-crowned head.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There are who come to me, and write, and send,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whom I would love, giving good things to all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But friend⁠—that name I cannot on them spend;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis from the centre of self-love they call",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For cherishing⁠—for which they first must know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How to be still, and take the seat that’s low:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When, Lord, shall I be fit⁠—when wilt thou call me friend?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Wilt thou not one day, Lord? In all my wrong,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Self-love and weakness, laziness and fear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This one thing I can say: I am content",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be and have what in thy heart I am meant",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be and have. In my best times I long",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After thy will, and think it glorious-dear;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even in my worst, perforce my will to thine is bent.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My God, I look to thee for tenderness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such as I could not seek from any man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or in a human heart fancy or plan⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A something deepest prayer will not express:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, with thy breath blow on my being’s fires,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until, even to the soul with self-love wan,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I yield the primal love, that no return desires.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Only no word of mine must ever foster",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The self that in a brother’s bosom gnaws;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I may not fondle failing, nor the boaster",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Encourage with the breath of my applause.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Weakness needs pity, sometimes love’s rebuke;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strength only sympathy deserves and draws⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And grows by every faithful loving look.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis but as men draw nigh to thee, my Lord,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They can draw nigh each other and not hurt.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who with the gospel of thy peace are girt,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The belt from which doth hang the Spirit’s sword,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall breathe on dead bones, and the bones shall live,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sweet poison to the evil self shall give,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, clean themselves, lift men clean from the mire abhorred.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My Lord, I have no clothes to come to thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My shoes are pierced and broken with the road;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am torn and weathered, wounded with the goad,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And soiled with tugging at my weary load:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The more I need thee! A very prodigal",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I stagger into thy presence, Lord of me:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One look, my Christ, and at thy feet I fall!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Why should I still hang back, like one in a dream,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who vainly strives to clothe himself aright,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That in great presence he may seemly seem?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why call up feeling?⁠—dress me in the faint,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Worn, faded, cast-off nimbus of some saint?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why of old mood bring back a ghostly gleam⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While there He waits, love’s heart and loss’s blight!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Son of the Father, elder brother mine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "See thy poor brother’s plight; See how he stands",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Defiled and feeble, hanging down his hands!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Make me clean, brother, with thy burning shine;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From thy rich treasures, householder divine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bring forth fair garments, old and new, I pray,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And like thy brother dress me, in the old home-bred way.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My prayer-bird was cold⁠—would not away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Although I set it on the edge of the nest.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then I bethought me of the story old⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love-fact or loving fable, thou know’st best⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How, when the children had made sparrows of clay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou mad’st them birds, with wings to flutter and fold:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take, Lord, my prayer in thy hand, and make it pray.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My poor clay-sparrow seems turned to a stone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And from my heart will neither fly nor run.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I cannot feel as thou and I both would,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, Father, I am willing⁠—make me good.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What art thou father for, but to help thy son?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Look deep, yet deeper, in my heart, and there,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond where I can feel, read thou the prayer.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Oh what it were to be right sure of thee!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sure that thou art, and the same as thy son, Jesus!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, faith is deeper, wider than the sea,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yea, than the blue of heaven that ever flees us!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet simple as the cry of sore-hurt child,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or as his shout, with sudden gladness wild,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When home from school he runs, till morn set free.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If I were sure thou, Father, verily art,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "True father of the Nazarene as true,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sure as I am of my wife’s shielding heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sure as of sunrise in the watching blue,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sure as I am that I do eat and drink,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And have a heart to love and laugh and think,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Meseems in flame the joy might from my body start.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But I must know thee in a deeper way",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than any of these ways, or know thee not;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My heart at peace far loftier proof must lay",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than if the wind thou me the wave didst roll,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than if I lay before thee a sunny spot,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or knew thee as the body knows its soul,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or even as the part doth know its perfect whole.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There is no word to tell how I must know thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No wind clasped ever a low meadow-flower",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So close that as to nearness it could show thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No rainbow so makes one the sun and shower.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A something with thee, I am a nothing fro’ thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because I am not save as I am in thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My soul is ever setting out to win thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I know not how⁠—for that I first must know thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I know I know thee not as I would know thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For my heart burns like theirs that did not know him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till he broke bread, and therein they must know him.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I know thee, knowing that I do not know thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor ever shall till one with me I know thee⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even as thy son, the eternal man, doth know thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Creation under me, in, and above,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Slopes upward from the base, a pyramid,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On whose point I shall stand at last, and love.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the first rush of vapour at thy will,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the last poet-word that darkness chid,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou hast been sending up creation’s hill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To lift thy souls aloft in faithful Godhead free.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I think my thought, and fancy I think thee.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, wake me up; rend swift my coffin-planks;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I pray thee, let me live⁠—alive and free.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My soul will break forth in melodious thanks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aware at last what thou wouldst have it be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When thy life shall be light in me, and when",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My life to thine is answer and amen.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "How oft I say the same things in these lines!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even as a man, buried in during dark,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Turns ever where the edge of twilight shines,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Prays ever towards the vague eternal mark;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or as the sleeper, having dreamed he drinks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Back straightway into thirstful dreaming sinks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So turns my will to thee, for thee still longs, still pines.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The mortal man, all careful, wise, and troubled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The eternal child in the nursery doth keep.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To-morrow on to-day the man heaps doubled;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The child laughs, hopeful, even in his sleep.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The man rebukes the child for foolish trust;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The child replies, “Thy care is for poor dust;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be still, and let me wake that thou mayst sleep.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Till I am one, with oneness manifold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I must breed contradiction, strife, and doubt;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Things tread Thy court⁠—look real⁠—take proving hold⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My Christ is not yet grown to cast them out;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Alas! to me, false-judging ’twixt the twain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Unseen oft fancy seems, while, all about,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Seen doth lord it with a mighty train.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But when the Will hath learned obedience royal,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He straight will set the child upon the throne;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To whom the seen things all, grown instant loyal,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will gather to his feet, in homage prone⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The child their master they have ever known;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then shall the visible fabric plainly lean",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On a Reality that never can be seen.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thy ways are wonderful, maker of men!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou gavest me a child, and I have fed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And clothed and loved her, many a growing year;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lo! now a friend of months draws gently near,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And claims her future⁠—all beyond his ken⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There he hath never loved her nor hath led:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She weeps and moans, but turns, and leaves her home so dear.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "She leaves, but not forsakes. Oft in the night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oft at mid-day when all is still around,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sudden will rise, in dim pathetic light,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some childish memory of household bliss,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or sorrow by love’s service robed and crowned;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rich in his love, she yet will sometimes miss",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The mother’s folding arms, the mother’s sealing kiss.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then first, I think, our eldest-born, although",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Loving, devoted, tender, watchful, dear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The innermost of home-bred love shall know!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yea, when at last the janitor draws near,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A still, pale joy will through the darkness go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At thought of lying in those arms again,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which once were heaven enough for any pain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "By love doth love grow mighty in its love:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Once thou shalt love us, child, as we love thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Father of loves, is it not thy decree",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That, by our long, far-wandering remove",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From thee, our life, our home, our being blest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We learn at last to love thee true and best,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And rush with all our loves back to thy infinite rest?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am a little weary of my life⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not thy life, blessed Father! Or the blood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Too slowly laves the coral shores of thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or I am weary of weariness and strife.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Open my soul-gates to thy living flood;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I ask not larger heart-throbs, vigour-fraught,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I pray thy presence, with strong patience rife.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I will what thou will’st⁠—only keep me sure",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That thou art willing; call to me now and then.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, ceasing to enjoy, I shall endure",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With perfect patience⁠—willing beyond my ken",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond my love, beyond my thinking scope;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Willing to be because thy will is pure;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Willing thy will beyond all bounds of hope.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This weariness of mine, may it not come",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From something that doth need no setting right?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall fruit be blamed if it hang wearily",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A day before it perfected drop plumb",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the sad earth from off its nursing tree?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ripeness must always come with loss of might.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The weary evening fall before the resting night.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Hither if I have come through earth and air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through fire and water⁠—I am not of them;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Born in the darkness, what fair-flashing gem",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would to the earth go back and nestle there?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not of this world, this world my life doth hem;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What if I weary, then, and look to the door,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because my unknown life is swelling at the core?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "All winged things came from the waters first;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Airward still many a one from the water springs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In dens and caves wind-loving things are nursed:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I lie like unhatched bird, upfolded, dumb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While all the air is trembling with the hum",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of songs and beating hearts and whirring wings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That call my slumbering life to wake to happy things.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I lay last night and knew not why I was sad.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“ ’Tis well with God,” I said, “and he is the truth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let that content me.”⁠—’Tis not strength, nor youth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor buoyant health, nor a heart merry-mad,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That makes the fact of things wherein men live:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He is the life, and doth my life outgive;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In him there is no gloom, but all is solemn-glad,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I said to myself, “Lo, I lie in a dream",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of separation, where there comes no sign;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My waking life is hid with Christ in God,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where all is true and potent⁠—fact divine.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will not heed the thing that doth but seem;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will be quiet as lark upon the sod;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God’s will, the seed, shall rest in me the pod.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And when that will shall blossom⁠—then, my God,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There will be jubilation in a world!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The glad lark, soaring heavenward from the sod,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up the swift spiral of its own song whirled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Never such jubilation wild out-poured",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As from my soul will break at thy feet, Lord,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a great tide from sea-heart shoreward hurled.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For then thou wilt be able, then at last,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To glad me as thou hungerest to do;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then shall thy life my heart all open find,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A thoroughfare to thy great spirit-wind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then shall I rest within thy holy vast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One with the bliss of the eternal mind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all creation rise in me created new.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What makes thy being a bliss shall then make mind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For I shall love as thou, and love in thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then shall I have whatever I desire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My every faintest wish being all divine;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Power thou wilt give me to work mightily,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even as my Lord, leading thy low men nigher,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With dance and song to cast their best upon thy fire.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then shall I live such an essential life",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That a mere flower will then to me unfold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More bliss than now grandest orchestral strife⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By love made and obedience humble-bold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall straight through its window God behold.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God, I shall feed on thee, thy creature blest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With very being⁠—work at one with sweetest rest.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Give me a world, to part for praise and sunder.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The brooks be bells; the winds, in caverns dumb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wake fife and flute and flageolet and voice;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The fire-shook earth itself be the great drum;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And let the air the region’s bass out thunder;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The firs be violins; the reeds hautboys;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rivers, seas, icebergs fill the great score up and under!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But rather dost thou hear the blundered words",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of breathing creatures; the music-lowing herds",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of thy great cattle; thy soft-bleating sheep;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O’erhovered by the trebles of thy birds,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose Christ-praised carelessness song-fills the deep;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still rather a child’s talk who apart doth hide him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And make a tent for God to come and sit beside him.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This is not life; this being is not enough.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But thou art life, and thou hast life for me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou mad’st the worm⁠—to cast the wormy slough,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fly abroad⁠—a glory flit and flee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou hast me, statue-like, hewn in the rough,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Meaning at last to shape me perfectly.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, thou hast called me fourth, I turn and call on thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "’Tis thine to make, mine to rejoice in thine.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As, hungering for his mother’s face and eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The child throws wide the door, back to the wall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I run to thee, the refuge from poor lies:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lean dogs behind me whimper, yelp, and whine;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Life lieth ever sick, Death’s writhing thrall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In slavery endless, hopeless, and supine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The life that hath not willed itself to be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Must clasp the life that willed, and be at peace;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or, like a leaf wind-blown, through chaos flee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A life-husk into which the demons go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And work their will, and drive it to and fro;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A thing that neither is, nor yet can cease,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which uncreation can alone release.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But when I turn and grasp the making hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And will the making will, with confidence",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I ride the crest of the creation-wave,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Helpless no more, no more existence’ slave;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the heart of love’s creating fire I stand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, love-possessed in heart and soul and sense,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take up the making share the making Master gave.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "That man alone who does the Father’s works",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can be the Father’s son; yea, only he",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who sonlike can create, can ever be;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who with God wills not, is no son, not free.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O Father, send the demon-doubt that lurks",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Behind the hope, out into the abyss;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who trusts in knowledge all its good shall miss.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thy beasts are sinless, and do live before thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy child is sinful, and must run to thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy angels sin not and in peace adore thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I must will, or never more be free.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I from thy heart came, how can I ignore thee?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Back to my home I hurry, haste, and flee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There I shall dwell, love-praising evermore thee.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My holy self, thy pure ideal, lies",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Calm in thy bosom, which it cannot leave;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My self unholy, no ideal, hies",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hither and thither, gathering store to grieve⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not now, O Father! now it mounts, it flies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To join the true self in thy heart that waits,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, one with it, be one with all the heavenly mates.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Trusting thee, Christ, I kneel, and clasp thy knee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cast myself down, and kiss thy brother-feet⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One self thou and the Father’s thought of thee!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ideal son, thou hast left the perfect home,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ideal brother, to seek thy brothers come!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou know’st our angels all, God’s children sweet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And of each two wilt make one holy child complete.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To a slow end I draw these daily words,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor think such words often to write again⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rather, as light the power to me affords,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Christ’s new and old would to my friends unbind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through words he spoke help to his thought behind;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unveil the heart with which he drew his men;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Set forth his rule o’er devils, animals, corn, and wind.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I do remember how one time I thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“God must be lonely⁠—oh, so lonely lone!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will be very good to him⁠—ah, nought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can reach the heart of his great loneliness!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My whole heart I will bring him, with a moan",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I may not come nearer; I will lie prone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before the awful loveliness in loneliness’ excess.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A God must have a God for company.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lo! thou hast the Son-God to thy friend.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou honour’st his obedience, he thy law.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into thy secret life-will he doth see;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou fold’st him round in live love perfectly⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One two, without beginning, without end;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In love, life, strength, and truth, perfect without a flaw.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou hast not made, or taught me, Lord, to care",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For times and seasons⁠—but this one glad day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That flash in the girdle of the year so fair⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When thou wast born a man, because alway",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou wast and art a man, through all the flights",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of thought, and time, and thousandfold creation’s play.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We all are lonely, Maker⁠—each a soul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shut in by itself, a sundered atom of thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No two yet loved themselves into a whole;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even when we weep together we are two.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of two to make one, which yet two shall be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is thy creation’s problem, deep, and true,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To which thou only hold’st the happy, hurting clue.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "No less than thou, O Father, do we need",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A God to friend each lonely one of us.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As touch not in the sack two grains of seed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Touch no two hearts in great worlds populous.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Outside the making God we cannot meet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Him he has made our brother: homeward, thus,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To find our kin we first must turn our wandering feet.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It must be possible that the soul made",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should absolutely meet the soul that makes;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then, in that bearing soul, meet every other",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There also born, each sister and each brother.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lord, till I meet thee thus, life is delayed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am not I until that morning breaks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not I until my consciousness eternal wakes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Again I shall behold thee, daughter true;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hour will come when I shall hold thee fast",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In God’s name, loving thee all through and through.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Somewhere in his grand thought this waits for us.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then shall I see a smile not like thy last⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For that great thing which came when all was past,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was not a smile, but God’s peace glorious.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Twilight of the transfiguration-joy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gleam-faced, pure-eyed, strong-willed, high-hearted boy!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hardly thy life clear forth of heaven was sent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ere it broke out into a smile, and went.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So swift thy growth, so true thy goalward bent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou, child and sage inextricably blent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wilt one day teach thy father in some heavenly tent",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Go, my beloved children, live your life.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wounded, faint, bleeding, never yield the strife.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stunned, fallen-awake, arise, and fight again.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before you victory stands, with shining train",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of hopes not credible until they are.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond morass and mountain swells the star",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of perfect love⁠—the home of longing heart and brain",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}