I saw the wheat in billows roll,

A verdant ocean, stirred with joy,

It set a-throbbing in my soul

The madcap freedom of a boy:—

The blue sky bended far above,

A stagnant sea from pole to pole,

Clouds, like aerial ice-bergs, drove

On that still ocean, without shoal:—

The subtle spirit of the sky,

Alastor of my solitude,

Thrilled all my working pulses high

With visions of life’s magnitude—

(The wondrous vision of the whole!)

At once upon my startled eye,

Stood naked the primeval law,

Life’s noiseless currents eddied by,

The universal heart I saw,

Swayed by the cosmic oversoul.—

I trembled but I did not fall,

I ceased, and yet I did not die,

But from my eyes there fell the pall,

My soul no longer wondered why:

I knew the secret of the world,

Of night and day, of life and death,

For one brief instant, onward whirled,

My being breathed with godlike breath:

The sky spun like a mighty bowl,

I saw the wheat in billows roll.

Edward O. Jackson.