I am the World

I am the song, that rests upon the cloud ;
I am the sun ;
I am the dawn, the day, the hiding shroud,
When dusk is done.


I am the changing colours of the tree ;
The flower uncurled ;
I am the melancholy of the sea ;
I am the world.


The other souls that, passing in their place,
Each in his groove ;
Outstretching hands that chain me and embrace,
Speak and reprove.


‘O atom of that law, by which the earth
Is poised and whirled ;
Behold! you hurrying with the crowd assert
You are the world.’


Am I not one with all the things that be
Warm in the sun ?
All that my ears can hear, or eyes can see,
Till all be done.


Of song and shine, of changing leaf apart,
Of bud uncurled :
With all the senses pulsing at my heart,
I am the world.


One day the song that drifts upon the wind
I shall not hear :
Nor shall the rosy shoots to eyes grown blind
Again appear.


Deaf, in the dark, I shall arise and throw
From off my soul
The withered world with all its joy and woe,
That was my goal.


I shall arise, and like a shooting star
Slip from my place ;
So lingering see the old world from afar
Revolve in space.


And know more things than all the wise may know
Till all be done ;
Till One shall come who, breathing on the stars,
Blows out the sun.

Dora Sigerson Shorter, The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917)

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