Explore "Hymn" by Voltairine De Cleyre on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(This hymn was written at the request of a Christian Science friend who proposed to set it to music. It did not represent my beliefs either then or since, but rather what I wish might be my beliefs, had I not an inexorable capacity for seeing things as they are -- a vast scheme of mutual murder, with no justice anywhere, and no God in the soul or out of it.)
I am at peace -- no storm can ever touch me; / On my clear heights the sunshine only falls; / Far, far below glides the phantom voice of sorrows, / In peace-lifted light the Silence only calls.
Ah, Soul, ascend! The mountain way, up-leading, / Bears to the heights whereon the Blest have trod!
Lay down the burden; -- stanch the heart's sad bleeding; / Be ye at peace, for know that Ye are God!
Not long the way, not far in a dim heaven; / In the locked Self seek ye the guiding star: / Clear shine its rays, illumining the shadow; / There, where God is, there, too, O Souls ye are.
Ye are at one, and bound in Him forever, / Ev'n as the wave is bound in the great sea; / Never to drift beyond, below Him, never!
Whole as God is, so, even so, are ye.
Philadelphia, 1892.