| Wave, walls to seaward, Storm-clouds to leeward, Beaten and blown by the winds of the West, Sail we encumbered Past isles unnumbered, But never to greet the green island of Rest. |
| Lips that now tremble, Do you dissemble When you deny that the human is best? Love, the evangel, Finds the Archangel— Is that a truth when this may be a jest? |
| Star-drifts that glimmer Dimmer and dimmer, What do ye know of my weal or my woe? Was I born under The sun or the thunder? What do I come from, and where do I go? |
| Rest, shall it ever Come? Is endeavour Still a vain twining and twisting of cords? Is faith but treason; Reason, unreason, But a mechanical weaving of words? |
| What is the token, Ever unbroken, Swept down the spaces of querulous years,— Weeping or singing— That the Beginning Of all things is with us, and sees us, and hears? |
| What is the token? Bruised and broken, Bend I my life to a blossoming rod? Shall then the worst things Come to the first things, Finding the best of all, last of all, God? |