The Kingdom Within

The Kingdom Within

There is a kingdom of the spirit's ease.
    It is not in this helpless swirl of thought,
    Foam from the world-sea or spray whispers caught,
With which we build mind's shifting symmetries,
Nor in life's stuff of passionate unease,
    Nor the heart's unsure emotions frailly wrought
    Nor trivial clipped sense-joys soon brought to nought,
Nor in this body's solid transiences.

Wider behind than the vast universe
    Our spirit scans the drama and the stir,
        A peace, a light, an ecstasy, a power
Waiting at the end of blindness and the curse
    That veils it from its ignorant minister
        The grandeur of its free eternal hour.