read his verses. From the drawer of his table he took a scratched
and scored halfsheet, and--not in the most melodious of voices, yet
in one whose harshness and weakness could not cover a certain
refinement of spiritual tenderness--read as follows:

Lord, hear my discontent: All blank I stand,
A mirror polished by thy hand;
Thy sun's beams flash and flame from me--
I cannot help it: here I stand, there he;
To one of them I cannot say--
Go, and on yonder water play.
Nor one poor ragged daisy can I fashion--
I do not make the words of this my limping passion.
If I should say: Now I will think a thought,
Lo! I must wait, unknowing,
What thought in me is growing,
Until the thing to birth is brought;
Nor know I then what next will come
From out the gulf of silence dumb.
I am the door the thing did find
To pass into the general mind;
I cannot say I think--
I only stand upon the thought-well's brink;
From darkness to the sun the water bubbles up--
I lift it in my cup.
Thou only thinkest--I am thought;
Me and my thought thou thinkest. Nought
Am I but as a fountain spout
From which thy water welleth out.
Thou art the only One, the All in all.