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Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry - The Builders
Identifier
000192
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – from The Poems of Longfellow [printed about 1875]
from The Builders
For the structure that we raise
Time is with materials filled
Our todays and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build
Truly shape and fashion these
Leave no yawning gaps between
Think not, because no man sees
Such things will remain unseen
….............
Let us do our work as well
Both the unseen and the seen
Make the house where Gods may dwell
Beautiful entire and clean
Else our lives are incomplete
Standing in these walls of Time
Broken stairways where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb
Build today, the strong and sure
With a firm and ample base
And ascending and secure
Shall tomorrow find its place
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain
And one boundless reach of sky