Poem for Wednesday

A Heathen Hymn
By Sir Lewis Morris

O LORD, the Giver of my days,
My heart is ready, my heart is ready;
I dare not hold my peace, nor pause,
For I am fain to sing Thy praise.

I praise Thee not, with impious pride,
For that Thy partial hand has given
Bounties of wealth or form or brain,
Good gifts to other men denied.

Nor weary Thee with blind request,
For fancied goods Thy hand withholds;
I know not what to fear or hope,
Nor aught but that Thy will is best.

Not whence I come, nor whither I go,
Nor wherefore I am here, I know;
Nor if my life’s tale ends on earth,
Or mounts to bliss, or sinks to woe.

Nor know I aught of Thee, O Lord;
Behind the veil Thy face is hidden:
We faint, and yet Thy face is hidden;
We cry,—Thou answerest not a word.

But this I know, O Lord, Thou art,
And by Thee I too live and am;
We stand together, face to face,
Thou the great whole, and I the part.

We stand together, soul to soul,
Alone amidst Thy waste of worlds;
Unchanged, though all creation fade,
And Thy swift suns forget to roll.

Wherefore, because my life is Thine,
Because, without Thee I were not;
Because, as doth the sea, the sun,
My nature gives back the Divine.

Because my being with ceaseless flow
Sets to Thee as the brook to the sea;
Turns to Thee, as the flower to the sun,
And seeks what it may never know.

Because, without me Thou hadst been
For ever, seated midst Thy suns;
Marking the soulless cycles turn,
Yet wert Thyself unknown, unseen.

I praise Thee, everlasting Lord,
In life and death, in heaven and hell:
What care I, since indeed Thou art,
And I the creature of Thy word.

Only if such a thing may be:
When all Thy infinite will is done,
Take back the soul Thy breath has given,
And let me lose myself in Thee.

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I had a moment of, "Is this too traditionally patriarchally religious-sounding for my journal?" And then a moment of, "Fuck it, it's my journal and if it's not too traditionally patriarchally religious-sounding for me on this day-before-the-anniversary-of-9/11, then readers will deal."

TEN articles in a day and a half, count them. And I must review Star Trek Enterprise (you know, I DO enjoy writing that) tonight. Meaning: no I didn't read anyone else's LJ, no I didn't watch whatever it was on TV, no there's no fic in the works.

But I must admit something: in between getting stressed over the stuff TrekWeb was finding faster than I was, which meant I would have to attribute the discoveries to them because I'm honest that way (whereas when they nick items from us practically word for word, they never say "thanks to TrekToday for the heads-up" despite not being able to keep basic facts straight like which country a play will be performed in), I really enjoyed the news scramble. It's been years since I had to plow through timely headlines like that, even if this is, after all, Star Trek and not rocket science.

And those are very bad run-on sentences, and was not around to make sure I was using proper British English with gratuitous Os thrown in and Zs turned into Ss. Eek.

Am off on Very Important Business with , may not be back until midnight after reviewing and posting, hope everyone has a very lovely day. Oh yes, the one non-Trek article I did read this morning: Hillary Potter and the Senate Chamber of Secrets. Because, heh.