Gnosis
Gnosis
Original Text
Poems (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1844): 51-52.
Internet Archive
1Thought is deeper than all speech,
2 Feeling deeper than all thought;
3Souls to souls can never teach
4 What unto themselves was taught.
5We are spirits clad in veils;
6 Man by man was never seen;
7All our deep communing fails
8 To remove the shadowy screen.
9Heart to heart was never known;
10 Mind with mind did never meet;
11We are columns left alone,
12 Of a temple once complete.
13Like the stars that gem the sky,
14 Far apart, though seeming near,
15In our light we scattered lie;
16 All is this but starlight here.
17What is social company
18 But a babbling summer stream?
19What our wise philosophy
20 But the glancing of a dream?
21Only when the sun of love
22 Melts the scattered stars of thought;
23Only when we live above
24 What the dim-eyed worth hath taught;
25Only when our souls are fed
26 By the Fount which gave them birth,
27And by inspiration led,
28 Which they never drew from earth,
29We like parted drops of rain
30 Swelling till they meet and run,
31Shall be all absorbed again,
32 Melting, flowing into one.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire / Sharine Leung
RPO Edition
2012
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