The contented soul is all alone with God

Have you ever had a sleepless night or a stressful week? I know, that’s a stupid question. I think this lovely poem by good old Robert Louis Stevenson provides an apt description of “getting away from the world” and “spending some time with God”. Stevenson was a favorite of mine when I was little. The very first book that I ever received as a gift from my mom was “A Child’s Garden of Verses“. I still have it. I loved that book and re-read it on a regular basis. It is no wonder then, that this poem appealed to me as well.

Perhaps today, either literally or figuratively, you can have a little “getaway”.

AS One Who Having Wandered All Night Long
by Robert Louis Stevenson

AS one who having wandered all night long
In a perplexed forest, comes at length
In the first hours, about the matin song,
And when the sun uprises in his strength,
To the fringed margin of the wood, and sees,
Gazing afar before him, many a mile
Of falling country, many fields and trees,
And cities and bright streams and far-off Ocean’s smile:

I, O Melampus, halting, stand at gaze:
I, liberated, look abroad on life,
Love, and distress, and dusty travelling ways,
The steersman’s helm, the surgeon’s helpful knife,
On the lone ploughman’s earth-upturning share,
The revelry of cities and the sound
Of seas, and mountain-tops aloof in air,
And of the circling earth the unsupported round:

I, looking, wonder: I, intent, adore;
And, O Melampus, reaching forth my hands
In adoration, cry aloud and soar
In spirit, high above the supine lands
And the low caves of mortal things, and flee
To the last fields of the universe untrod,
Where is no man, nor any earth, nor sea,
And the contented soul is all alone with God.

Robert Louis Stevenson