I that saw where ye trod

The dim paths of the night
Set the shadow called God

In your skies to give light;

But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is in sight.

The tree many-rooted

That swells to the sky
With frondage red-fruited,
The life-tree am I ;

In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves: ye shall live and not die.

But the Gods of your fashion
That take and that give,
In their pity and passion

That scourge and forgive,

They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off: they shall die and not live.

My own blood is what stanches
The wounds in my bark:

Stars caught in my branches
Make day of the dark,

And are worshipped as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark.

Where dead ages hide under

The live roots of the tree,

In my darkness the thunder
Makes utterance of me;

In the clash of my boughs with each other ye hear the waves sound of the sea.

That noise is of Time,

As his feathers are spread
And his feet set to climb

All sounds of all changes,

All shadows and lights

On the world's mountain-ranges
And stream-riven heights,

Whose tongue is the wind's tongue and language of storm-clouds on earthshaking nights;

All forms of all faces,

All works of all hands
In unsearchable places

Of time-stricken lands,

All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands.

Though sore be my burden
And more than ye know,
And my growth have no guerdon
But only to grow,

Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or death worms below.

These too have their part in me,

As I too in these;

Such fire is at heart in me,

Such sap is this tree's,

Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and of seas.

In the spring-colored hours
When my mind was as May's,
There brake forth of me flowers
By centuries of days,

Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as rays.

And the sound of them springing
And smell of their shoots
Were as warmth and sweet singing
And strength to my roots;

And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits.

I bid you but be;

I have need not of prayer;

I have need of you free

As your mouths of mine air; That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me fair.

More fair than strange fruit is
Of faith ye espouse;
In me only the root is

That blooms in your boughs; Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your vows.

In the darkening and whitening
Abysses ador'd,

With dayspring and lightning

For lamp and for sword,

God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the wrath of the Lord.

O my sons, O too dutiful
Toward Gods not of me,
Was not I enough beautiful?
Was it hard to be free?

For behold, I am with you, am in you and of you; look forth now and see.

Lo, wing'd with world's wonders,
With miracles shod,

With the fires of his thunders
For raiment and rod,

God trembles in heaven, and his angels are white with the terror of God.

For his twilight is come on him,
His anguish is here;

And his spirits gaze dumb on him,
Grown gray from his fear;
And his hour taketh hold on him
stricken, the last of his infinite year.

Thought made him and breaks
him.

Truth slays and forgives;
But to you, as time takes him,

This new thing it gives,

Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives.

For truth only is living,
Truth only is whole,
And the love of his giving

Man's polestar and pole;

Man, pulse of my centre, and fruit of my body, and seed of my soul.

One birth of my bosom;
One beam of mine eye;
One topmost blossom

That scales the sky:

Man, equal and one with me, man that

is made of me, man that is I. 1871.