The Higher Pantheism

The Higher Pantheism


The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?

Is not the Vision He? tho He be not that which He seems?
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?

Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why;
For is He not all but that which has power to feel I am I?

Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom
Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and gloom.

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice,
For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice.

Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool;
For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool;

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;
But if we could see and hear, this Visionwere it not He?

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson was a renowned British poet of the Victorian era, born on August 6, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire. He is best known for his works like 'In Memoriam A.H.H.', 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', and 'Ulysses'. As one of the most popular poets of his time, he was appointed Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland in 1850. Tennyson's poetry is characterized by its rich imagery, deep emotion, and classical themes. He passed away on October 6, 1892.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Early Sonnets

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

The Voice And The Peak

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

In Memoriam 82: I Wage Not Any Feud With Death

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

Achilles Over The Trench

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

English

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God And The Universe

I.
Will my tiny spark of being wholly vanish in your deeps and heights?
Must my day be dark by reason, O ye Heavens, of your boundless nights,
Rush of Suns, and roll of systems, and your fiery clash of meteorites?

II.
Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human state,
Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great,
Nor the myriad world, His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Love

I.

Thou, from the first, unborn, undying Love,
Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near,
Before the face of God didst breathe and move,
Though night and pain and rain and death reign here.
Thou foldest, like a golden atmosphere,
The very throne of the eternal God;
Passing through thee the edicts of his fear
Are mellowed into music, borne abroad
By the loud winds, though they uprend the sea,
Even from its central deeps: thine empery
Is over all; thou wilt not brook eclipse;
Thou goest and returnest to His leeps
Like lightning: thou dost ever brood above
The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love.


II.

To know thee is all wisdom, and old age
Is but to know thee: dimly we behold thee
Athwart the veils of evils which infold thee.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

De Profundis

The Two Greetings.

I.

Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Where all that was to be, in all that was,
Whirld for a million æons thro the vast
Waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying light
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Thro all this changing world of changeless law,
And every phase of ever-heightening life,
And nine long months of antenatal gloom,
With this last moon, this crescenther dark orb
Touchd with earths lightthou comest, darling boy;
Our own; a babe in lineament and limb
Perfect, and prophet of the perfect man;
Whose face and form are hers and mine in one,
Indissolubly married like our love;
Live, and be happy in thyself, and serve
This mortal race thy kin so well, that men
May bless thee as we bless thee,...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Akbars Dream

AN INSCRIPTION BY ABUL FAZL FOR A TEMPLE IN KASHMIR (Blochmann xxxii.)



O God in every temple I see people that see thee,
and in every language I hear spoken, people praise thee.
Polytheism and Islám feel after thee.
Each religion says, Thou art one, without equal.
If it be a mosque people murmur the holy prayer,
and if it be a Christian Church, people ring the bell from love to Thee.
Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister,
and sometimes the mosque.
But it is thou whom I search from temple to temple.
Thy elect have no dealings with either heresy or orthodoxy;
for neither of them stands behind the screen of thy truth.
Heresy to the heretic, and religion to the orthodox,
But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume seller.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Faith

I.
Doubt no longer that the Highest is the wisest and the best,
Let not all that saddens Nature blight thy hope or break thy rest,
Quail not at the fiery mountain, at the shipwreck, or the rolling
Thunder, or the rending earthquake, or the famine, or the pest!

II.
Neither mourn if human creeds be lower than the hearts desire!
Thro the gates that bar the distance comes a gleam of what is higher.
Wait till Death has flung them open, when the man will make the Maker
Dark no more with human hatreds in the glare of deathless fire!

Alfred Lord Tennyson

A Character

With a half-glance upon the sky
At night he said, The wanderings
Of this most intricate Universe
Teach me the nothingness of things.
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.

He spake of beauty: that the dull
Saw no divinity in grass,
Life in dead stones, or spirit in air;
Then looking as twere in a glass,
He smoothd his chin and sleekd his hair,
And said the earth was beautiful.

He spake of virtue: not the gods
More purely, when they wish to charm
Pallas and Juno sitting by:
And with a sweeping of the arm,
And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye,
Devolved his rounded periods.

Most delicately hour by hour
He canvassd human mysteries,
And trod on silk, as if the winds
Blew his own praises in his eye...

Alfred Lord Tennyson