The Choir Invisible

by George Eliot

Roses 

You love the roses - so do I. I wish

The sky would rain down roses, as they rain

From off the shaken bush. Why will it not? 

Then all the valley would be pink and white

And soft to tread on. They would fall as light

As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be

Like sleeping and like waking, all at once! 

I Grant You Ample Leave 

"I grant you ample leave 

To use the hoary formula 'I am' 

Naming the emptiness where thought is not; 

But fill the void with definition, 'I' 

Will be no more a datum than the words 

You link false inference with, the 'Since' & 'so' 

That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl. 

Resolve your 'Ego', it is all one web 

With vibrant ether clotted into worlds: 

Your subject, self, or self-assertive 'I' 

Turns nought but object, melts to molecules, 

Is stripped from naked Being with the rest 

Of those rag-garments named the Universe. 

Or if, in strife to keep your 'Ego' strong 

You make it weaver of the etherial light, 

Space, motion, solids & the dream of Time -- 

Why, still 'tis Being looking from the dark, 

The core, the centre of your consciousness, 

That notes your bubble-world: sense, pleasure, pain, 

What are they but a shifting otherness, 

Phantasmal flux of moments? --" 

The Choir Invisible 

Oh, may I join the choir invisible 

Of those immortal dead who live again 

In minds made better by their presence; live 

In pulses stirred to generosity, 

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 

For miserable aims that end with self, 

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 

And with their mild persistence urge men's search 

To vaster issues. So to live is heaven: 

To make undying music in the world, 

Breathing a beauteous order that controls 

With growing sway the growing life of man. 

So we inherit that sweet purity 

For which we struggled, failed, and agonized 

With widening retrospect that bred despair. 

Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued, 

A vicious parent shaming still its child, 

Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved; 

Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies, 

Die in the large and charitable air, 

And all our rarer, better, truer self 

That sobbed religiously in yearning song, 

That watched to ease the burden of the world, 

Laboriously tracing what must be, 

And what may yet be better, -- saw within 

A worthier image for the sanctuary, 

And shaped it forth before the multitude, 

Divinely human, raising worship so 

To higher reverence more mixed with love, -- 

That better self shall live till human Time 

Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky 

Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb 

Unread forever. This is life to come, -- 

Which martyred men have made more glorious 

For us who strive to follow. May I reach 

That purest heaven, -- be to other souls 

The cup of strength in some great agony, 

Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 

Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, 

Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 

And in diffusion ever more intense! 

So shall I join the choir invisible 

Whose music is the gladness of the world.