this is the void in silence

Sunday, 10/6, 7:23 PM

Not the round natural world, not the deep mind,

The reconcilement holds: the blue abyss

Collects it not; our arrows sink amiss

And but in Him may we our import find.

The agony to know, the grief, the bliss

Of toil, is vain and vain: clots of the sod

Gathered in heat and haste and flung behind

To blind ourselves and others, what but this

Still grasping dust and sowing toward the wind?

No more thy meaning seek, thine anguish plead,

But leaving straining thought and stammering word,

Across the barren azure pass to God:

Shooting the void in silence like a bird,

A bird that shuts his wings for better speed.

-Frederick Goddard Tuckerman