Poem by Constance Caroline Woodhill Naden

The Ideal

I am a sun child and always strive
Up to the eternal light;
The earth day, the narrow shimmer of clouds
Doesn't satisfy my longing.

Is it enough for me to live on the mountaintop,
Like the shy chamois?
No! where no eagle soared, I must sit enthroned,
As in the ancestral empire.

I want to tear the dreamed veils
Of matter, space, time,
And pour myself out, free and ever freer,
Into infinity.

I shall never lack brotherly spirits,
Like here in the smoke of lies;
I want to inspire the dead universe myself,
With a slight breath of God.

The wind only strengthens through its own blowing,
The action gives birth to the strength:
I am not yet. Only then can man come into being
When he creates as God.

For free! What's the use of the truth sparkling?
Increased to full day?
Even the Sun Throne must be darkened
The heart that always desires.

How should I refresh my thirsty nature?
With an empty, wavering appearance?
I can only recover on the earth's breast
Of spicy heavenly pain.

Forgive me, O nature, for my childish babbling,
The frantic singing:
But what are you but just echoing?
About the old soul sound?

The poet's bold dream is not lost,
He was too tight, too pale:
It is only in the human soul that birth takes place
The kingdom of earth and heaven.

1. In the Garden
2. The Sister of Mercy
3. The New Orthodoxy
4. To a Hyacinth in January
5. Light-Born Sorrows

Duncan Scott The Ideal ("Let your soul grow a thing apart")

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