A Cry
by
Lord, hear my discontent: all blank I stand,
A mirror polished by thy hand;
Thy sun’s beams flash and flame from me–
I cannot help it: here I stand, there he!
To one of them I cannot say,
Go, and on yonder water play;
Nor one poor ragged daisy can I fashion–
I do not make the words of this my limping passion!
If I should say, Now I will think a thought,
Lo, I must wait, unknowing
What thought in me is growing,
Until the thing to birth be brought!
Nor know I then what next will come
From out the gulf of silence dumb:
I am the door the thing will find
To pass into the general mind!
I cannot say I think—
I only stand upon the thought-well’s brink:
From darkness to the sun the water bubbles up–
lift it in my cup.
Thou only thinkest–I am thought;
Me and my thought thou thinkest. Nought
Am I but as a fountain spout
From which thy water welleth out.
Thou art the only one, the all in all.–
Yet when my soul on thee doth call
And thou dost answer out of everywhere,
I in thy allness have my perfect share.