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Dinah Maria Mulock - Immutable
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AUTUMN to winter, winter into spring, 
Spring into summer, summer into fall,-- 
So rolls the changing year, and so we change; 
Motion so swift, we know not that we move. 
Till at the gate of some memorial hour 
We pause--look in its sepulchre to find 
The cast-off shape that years since we called "I"-- 
And start, amazed. Yet on! We may not stay 
To weep or laugh. All which is past, is past 
Even while we gaze the simulated form 
Drops into dust, like many-centuried corpse 
At opening of a tomb. 
Alack, this world 
Is full of change, change, change,--nothing but change! 
Is there not one straw in life`s whirling flood 
To hold by, as the torrent sweeps us down, 
Us, scattered leaves; eddied and broken; torn 
Roughly asunder; or in smooth mid-stream 
Divided each from other without pain; 
Collected in what looks like union, 
Yet is but stagnant chance,--stopping to rot 
By the same pebble till the tide shall turn; 
Then on, to find no shelter and no rest, 
Forever rootless and forever lone. 
O God, we are but leaves upon Thy stream, 
Clouds on Thy sky. We do but move across 
The silent breast of Thy infinitude 
Which bears us all. We pour out day by day 
Our long, brief moan of mutability 
To Thine immutable--and cease. 
Yet still 
Our change yearns after Thine unchangedness; 
Our mortal craves Thine immortality; 
Our manifold and multiform and weak 
Imperfectness, requires the perfect ONE. 
For Thou art ONE, and we are all of Thee; 
Dropped from Thy bosom, as Thy sky drops down 
Its morning dews, which glitter for a space, 
Uncertain whence they fell, or whither tend, 
Till the great Sun arising on his fields 
Upcalls them all, and they rejoicing go. 

So, with like joy, O Light Eterne, we spring 
Thee-ward, and leave the pleasant fields of earth, 
Forgetting equally its blossomed green 
And its dry dusty paths which drank us up 
Remorseless,--we, poor humble drops of dew, 
That only wish to freshen a flower`s breast, 
And be exhaled to heaven. 
O Thou supreme 
All-satisfying and immutable One, 
It is enough to be absorbed in Thee 
And vanish,--though `t were only to a voice 
That through all ages with perpetual joy 
Goes evermore loud crying, "God! God! God!"
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