With brain o'erworn, with heart a summer clod,
With eye so practised in each form around,--
And all forms mean,--to glance above the ground
Irks it, each day of many days we plod,
Tongue-tied and deaf, along life's common road;
But suddenly, we know not how, a sound
Of living streams, an odour, a flower crowned
With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod,
And we awake. O joy of deep amaze!
Beneath the everlasting hills we stand,
We hear the voices of the morning seas,
And earnest prophesyings in the land,
While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze
The encompa**ing great cloud of witnesses.