All Flesh

I do not need the skies'  Pomp, when I would be wise;  For pleasaunce nor to use  Heaven's champaign when I muse.  One grass-blade in its veins  Wisdom's whole flood contains;  Thereon my foundering mind  Odyssean fate can find.  O little blade, now vaunt  Thee, and be arrogant!  Tell the proud sun that he  Sweated in shaping thee;  Night, that she did unvest  Her mooned and argent breast  To suckle thee.  Heaven fain  Yearned over thee in rain,  And with wide parent wing  Shadowed thee, nested thing,  Fed thee, and slaved for thy  Impotent tyranny.  Nature's broad thews bent  Meek for thy content.  Mastering littleness  Which the wise heavens confess,  The frailty which doth draw  Magnipotence to its law--  These were,

O happy one, these  Thy laughing puissances!  Be confident of thought,  Seeing that thou art naught;  And be thy pride thou'rt all  Delectably safe and small.  Epitomized in thee  Was the mystery  Which shakes the spheres conjoint--  God focussed to a point.  All thy fine mouths shout  Scorn upon dull-eyed doubt.  Impenetrable fool  Is he thou canst not school  To the humility  By which the angels see!  Unfathomably framed  Sister,

I am not shamed  Before the cherubin  To vaunt my flesh thy kin.  My one hand thine, and one  Imprisoned in God's own,  I am as God; alas,  And such a god of grass!  A little root clay-caught,  A wind, a flame, a thought,  Inestimably naught!