In No Strange Land

 The kingdom of God is within you


O world invisible, we view thee, 
O world intangible, we touch thee, 
O world unknowable, we know thee, 
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! 

Does the fish soar to find the ocean, 
The eagle plunge to find the air-- 
That 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 estrangèd faces, 
That miss the many-splendored 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 to Heaven by the hems; 
And lo, Christ walking on the water, 
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

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