Oh world intangible, we touch thee,
Oh world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air
Do we ask of the stars in motion,
If they have rumor of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places;
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
Tis ye, tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
But when so sad thou canst not sadder
Cry and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesaret, but Thames!
-- Francis Thompson
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