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T H E WOR L D | 41 Among the Gods How close the air of valleys, and how close The teeming little life that harbors there! For me, I will climb mountains. Up and up, Higher and higher, till I pant for breath In that thin clearness. Still? There is no sound Nor memory of sound upon these heights. Ah! the great sunlight! The caressing sky, The beauty, and the stillness, and the peace! I see my pathway clear for miles below; See where I fell, and set a friendly sign To warn some other of the danger there. The green small world is wide below me spread. The great small world! Some things look large and fair Which, in their midst, I could not even see; And some look small which used to terrify. Blessed these heights of freedom, wisdom, rest! I will go higher yet. A sea of cloud Rolls soundless waves between me and the world, This is the zone of everlasting snows, And the sweet silence of the hills below Is sing and laughter to the silence here. Great fields, huge peaks, long awful slopes of snow. Alone, triumphant, man above the world, I stand among these white eternities. Sheer at my feet Sink the unsounded, cloud-encumbered gulfs; And shifting mists now veil and now reveal The unknown fastnesses above me yet. I am alone—above all life—sole king Of these white wastes. How pitiful and small Becomes the outgrown world! I reign supreme, And in this utter stillness and wide peace Look calmly down upon the universe. Surely that crest has changed! That pile of cloud That covers half the sky, waves like a robe! That large and gentle wind Is like the passing of a presence here! See how yon massive mist-enshrouded peak Is like the shape of an unmeasured foot,— The figure with the stars! Ah! what is this? It moves, lifts, bends, is gone! With what a shocking sense of littleness— A reeling universe that changes place, 42 | In This Our World And falls to new relation over me— I feel the unseen presence of the gods! Songs I O world of green, all shining, shifting! O world of blue, all living, lifting! O world where glassy waters smoothly roll! Fair earth, and heaven free, Ye are but part of me— Ye are my soul! O woman nature, shining, shifting! O woman creature, living, lifting! Come soft and still to one who waits thee here! Fair soul, both mine and free, Ye who are part of me, Appear! Appear! II How could I choose but weep? The poor bird lay asleep; For lack of food, for lack of breath, For lack of life he came to death— How could I choose but weep? How could I choose but smile? There was no lack the while! In bliss he did undo himself; Where life was full he slew himself— How could I choose but smile? Would ye but understand! Joy is on every hand! Ye shut your eyes and call it night, Ye grope and fall in seas of light— Would ye but understand! Heaven Thou bright mirage, that o’er man’s arduous way Hast hung in the hot sky, with fountains streaming, Cool marble domes, and palm-fronds waving, gleaming,— Vision of rest and peace to end the day! Now he is wearied, alone, astray, Spent with long labor, led by thy sweet seeming, Faint as the breath of Nature’s lightest dreaming, Thou waverest and vanishest away! ...

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