_How are you, dear world, this morning?
Clean from my bath of sleep,
Warm from the bosom of my mother star,
Recharged with the energy of my father self,
Restored from all derelict hours to the lawful service of time,
I come without gift or doctrine or tethering humor
To entertain your fateful will._
How are you, dear world, this morning?
I went to bed last night in the twist and snarl of a problem.
Have you awakened me to a revelation?
Has some change come upon the face of the earth and the heart of man?
Was life still busy while my life slept?
Was something done with the dreams of my sorrow and joy to transfigure
in man the drag of his daily task?
Have all the prophets who died unfulfilled and all the plain men and
women and children who burned or starved from injustice come back to
earth to partake of a deferred feast?
What is it, dear world, I bring with empty hands to your morning?
What is it, dear world, you bring with hands as empty to my bedside?
Do the things that were stolen remain stolen?
Do the lives that were destroyed remain dead?
Do the stragglers who failed still fail?
Does the sleeper who slept the sleep of the merchant awake only to the
merchant?
Does the law that was yesterday at my throat awake only to the law?
Does the singer awake only to sing, the artist to paint, and the orator
to talk?
Or does the merchant awake to the man?
Or does the law of the state awake to the law of the heart?
Or do stolen things shift back into right relations?
Or is the singer silent, or does the artist put aside his paints, or has
the orator stopt talking, because something greater than song or art
or eloquence has appeared in the face of the multitude?
How are you, dear world, this morning?
We have had confidences other days but somehow the confidences of this
day are sweetest of all,
They find me where I am remote, they seek me out where I am reluctant,
they confirm me where I am weak,
They melt me down from flaw and angle into purity and circle,
They interpret me to last night’s strangers and they introduce me to the
real meanings of my vagrant past,
They remove me from my quarrels and they deliver me to truce and peace.
For now I see that when of old I thought of justice and believed I was
dreaming that only then was I awake,
For now I see that the wrongdoer is the first to withdraw wrong and is
the only one who can withdraw it,
For now I see that all the effort I spent trying to discover why lives
were beautiful or ugly has shown me that all ugliness and all beauty
finally must lapse in one transfiguration,
For now in the confidences of this morning, in the rapture of this
awakening, I find my illimitable roots trailed backward and forward
and round into all time and all men,
Pledging my love to countless surrenders and repeals.