I have some little human power To turn your purpose to my end, For which I thank you every hour. I stand at worship, while you send Thrills up my body to my heart, And I am all in love to know How by your strength you keep me part Of earth, which cannot let me go; How everything I see around, Whether it can or cannot move, Is granted liberty of ground, And freedom to enjoy your love;
Though you are silent always, and, alone To You yourself, your power remains unknown.
They are the angels of that watery world, With so much knowledge that they just aspire To move themselves on golden fins, Or fill their paradise with fire By darting suddenly from end to end.
Glowing a thousand centuries behind In pools half-recollected of the mind, Their large eyes stare and stare, but do not see Beyond those curtains of Eternity.
When twilight flows into the room And air becomes like water, you can feel Their movements growing larger in the gloom, And you are led Backward to where they live beyond the dead.
But in the morning, when the seven rays Of London sunlight one by one incline, They glide to meet them, and their gulping lips Suck the light in, so they are caught and played Like salmon on a heavenly fishing line.
Ghosts on a twilight floor, Moving about behind their watery door, Breathing and yet not breathing day and night, They give the house some gleam of faint delight.
You little friend, your nose is ready; you sniff, Asking for that expected walk, (Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff) And almost talk.
And so the moment becomes a moving force; Coats glide down from their pegs in the humble dark; The sticks grow live to the stride of their vagrant course. You scamper the stairs, Your body informed with the scent and the track and the mark Of stoats and weasels, moles and badgers and hares.
We are going OUT. You know the pitch of the word, Probing the tone of thought as it comes through fog And reaches by devious means (half-smelt, half-heard) The four-legged brain of a walk-ecstatic dog.
Out in the garden your head is already low. (Can you smell the rose? Ah, no.) But your limbs can draw Life from the earth through the touch of your padded paw.
Now, sending a little look to us behind, Who follow slowly the track of your lovely play, You carry our bodies forward away from mind Into the light and fun of your useless day.