Awakening ~ A Poem by Edward Dowden

Awakening

Edward Dowden

With brain o’erworn, with heart a summer clod,  
With eye so practised in each form around,—  
And all forms mean,—to glance above the ground  
Irks it, each day of many days we plod,  
Tongue-tied and deaf, along life’s common road.          
But suddenly, we know not how, a sound  
Of living streams, an odour, a flower crowned  
With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod,  
And we awake. O joy and deep amaze!  
Beneath the everlasting hills we stand,        
We hear the voices of the morning seas,  
And earnest prophesyings in the land,  
While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze  
The encompassing great cloud of witnesses.

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