Your day is done! O Mirth and Melancholy!

Laughter faints, subdued with run-away tears.

Blunted are the edgy thorns,

and velvet fur doth roughen.

Nothing to the eye appears,

light fades,

and darkling gloom is lost:

What is this state? What shall I say?

Ecstasy! O Ecstasy!

For Oh! of those whom mirth and melancholy afflicts–

What knowledge is theirs? What effects?

And though they laugh at us, we shall say without fear:

Greater sense in the senseless dwells

and is caught by those

whom the world regards not sane.

What are the words which clothe that sense

Ecstasy! O Ecstasy!

Across the hedges of the known,

with courage

a-leaping,

goes the lightning born of soulful clouds;

and dancing there doth glisten,

seeing the faint visions

that sing

mystic songs

which in voices sweet are heard,

Ecstasy! O Ecstasy!

How well the soil is unploughed left;

Doth a farmer there a title hold?

Haply one in a thousand might.

But from there to bring wild flowers

who shall obstruct thee.

if thou shalt sing the incantation–

Ecstasy! O Ecstasy?

Nature ever with the Soul

doth sport enchantingly;

The harmony of that sport to know,

is the object of all knowing;

The beauty of it to realise in the soul,

thou shalt sing with curious lips–

Ecstasy! O Ecstasy!

Where the Sun, the Moon and Stars

dancing all with brimful love,

do pluck the heavenly flowers;

there to go, if it certain be–

then be thou lone,

and moving whirl–

and whirling move–

and dancing, humming say–O say

Ecstasy! dear Ecstasy!