by Edward Carpenter
Chicago Lake 2011
Let your mind be quiet, realising the beauty of the
world,
and the immense, the boundless treasures that it holds
in store.
All that you have within you, all that your heart
desires,
all that your Nature so specially fits you for
that or the
counterpart of it waits embedded in the great Whole, for
you.
It will surely come to you.
Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed
time
will it come. All your crying and fever and reaching out
of
hands will make no difference.
Therefore do not begin that game at all.
Do not recklessly spill the waters of your mind
in this direction and in that,
lest you become like a spring lost and
dissipated in the desert.
But draw them together into a little compass, and hold them
still, so still;
And let them become clear, so clear – so limpid, so mirror-like;
at last the mountains and the sky shall glass themselves in
peaceful beauty,
and the antelope shall to descend to drink and to gaze at her
reflected image,
and the lion to quench his thirst,
and Love himself shall come and bend over and catch his
own likeness in you.
- New Zealand Prayer Book, pg. 157
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