Classic Poem

I do not say the sunset is perfect: it is enough —
It fills me, I am the flame of its fire, I am its red and gold: my veins dilate in its superlustrous humor.
I do not say my friend or my enemy is perfect or imperfect, or that my enemy is not perfect:
I know they are enough: I am their life incorporate, I walk in their boots.
I do not know what it is to be perfect, I know what it is to be:
I do not know perfect or imperfect — I know only life sphered, whole, set everywhere with the eye of the divine.

O house and home of men — O palace of arts and song — fixed there by workmen faithful,
Fabric of brick and stone and wood:
You, too, are but apparition!
I have forecast you in my visits beyond sense and boundaries, you are a dream manifest to my muscles,
Deeper your foundations than the earth they are set in,
Loftier your rooftree than the few feet of space they conquer:
In heaven and hell securely planted.

We are told to make haste while it is day, for the night soon comes:
I say, do not make haste, it is always day, the night never comes.

Keep your pace only with the years: there is just as much time to be as has been and it will always be so.

Am I my brother's keeper? No — but I am my brother's brother:
We are bridged to the universal purposes, I pass by him, he passes by me, on the infinite ways,
Sunlit, stareyed, the round accomplished.

There is no foe, there is no friend —
These are but strings of my lyre, these are fair measure, from each tones equal and pure,
I touch them conjoined to harmonic song, I raise by them the prophecy eternal —
They are my two lips: they are my hands, left and right, and by them I am full armed,
If I part them I break myself in two, I throw myself against the turning wheel.

Am I mocked with loss and gain?
The winner raises a voice of exultation, the defeated weeps:
I am undisturbed — I see that both win and both lose,
I see victor and vanquished each pocketing the booty, each paying the bills of conquest.

Had it been dreamed that any one could withdraw from any other?
Do not blur the sunbeam: it pierces all hearts: we are all in one line.

The scales are dismissed, the unclouded eye sees,
No longer to weigh, compute, to mark up and down, to offer prizes,
Now only the extended hand impartial, needing no pence or acres,
The hilltop, the valley's bottom, upcast, held down, by earth's humor, neither great, neither small, the lowland the mountain crest, the pine at the top the daisy on the field.

I am risen to my stature,
That which came out upon the rosebud as dew this morning,
In me, in my opened soul, the sunlight breaking free,
Illuminates all space.