The cloudbank breaks up; down from the luminous heaven

Giddy light fumbles across the bedazzled valleys.

Blown by the storm of south wind

I flutter along, unwearied,

Through an overcast life.

Oh, if only for a moment

Between me and the light that lasts forever

A storm would be kind enough to shatter the fog.

Strange country surrounds me,

Overwhelming breakers drive me, torn loose

Far away, from my home to this place.

South wind, hunt down the clouds,

Tear the veil away,

So light can fall on me among the confusing paths.

Again, every time, comforting

And, every time, new in the gleam of endless creation,

The world laughs in my eyes,

Comes alive and stirs into a thousand breathing forms,

Butterflies tumble in the wind streaming with sunlight,

Swallows sail into the blessing, the blue light,

Sea waves stream on the beach rocks.

Again, every time, star and tree,

Cloud and bird, my close kindred;

The stone greets me as brother,

The unending sea calls me, friendly.

My road, that I do not understand, leads me

Toward a blue, lost distance,

Nowhere a meaning, nowhere a definite goal—

Nevertheless, every forest brook speaks to me,

And every humming fly, of a deep law,

A right way that is holy,

Whose firmament spreads out above me also,

Whose secret tones,

As in the pace of the stars,

Beat time in my heart as well.

A dream gives what the day wore out;

At night, when the conscious will surrenders,

Some powers, set free, reach upward,

Sensing something godly, and following.

The woods rustle, and the stream, and through the night-blue sky

Of the quick soul, the summer lightning blows.

The world and my self, everything

Within and without me, grows into one.

Clouds drift through my heart,

Woods dream my dream,

House and pear tree tell me

The forgotten story of common childhood.

Streams resound and gorges cast shadows in me,

The moon, and the faint star, my close friends.

But the mild night,

That bows with its gentle clouds above me,

Has my mother’s face,

Kisses me, smiling, with inexhaustible love,

Shakes her head dreamily

As she used to do, and her hair

Waves through the world, and within it

The thousand stars, shuddering, turn pale.