Poem by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

First Series. 28. Not the round natural world, not the deep mind

Not the round natural world, not the deep mind,
The reconcilement holds: the blue abyss
Collects it not; our arrows sink amiss
And but in Him may we our import find.
The agony to know, the grief, the bliss
Of toil, is vain and vain: clots of the sod
Gathered in heat and haste and flung behind
To blind ourselves and others, what but this
Still grasping dust and sowing toward the wind?
No more thy meaning seek, thine anguish plead,
But leaving straining thought and stammering word,
Across the barren azure pass to God:
Shooting the void in silence like a bird,
A bird that shuts his wings for better speed.

1. First Series. 7. Dank fens of cedar, hemlock branches gray
2. Third Series. 4. Thin little leaves of wood fern, ribbed and toothed
3. First Series. 8. As when down some broad river dropping, we
4. Second Series. 7. His heart was in his garden; but his brain
5. First Series. 5. And so the day drops by, the horizon draws

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