An Atheist's Awakening

How many can say that they wake up slowly?
How many can say that they hold the dawn holy?
How many can say that they worship the stars,
And read history for its triumphs and its wars?
How many instead are sunk in melancholy?

How many can say they know amusement?
How many can say they have felt the bent
Towards incarnate wonder, incarnate creation?
How many know despair? How many elation?
How many are content indeed to be content?

How many recite in slow comfort the creed
That claims us destined to be dust indeed?
How many know not that we in death are dust,
But in life are love and lordliness and light and lust?
How many hate belladonna, call dandelion a weed?

How many reverse the natural order of pleasures,
Sing with some plaintiveness pure Heaven's measures,
And ache, at bottom, with a distracted heart,
Because they know that they should be taking part
In the world, and partaking of life's treasures?

How many loathe the thought of the world,
And have never, in darkness, their wings unfurled,
Thought about what it means to have human birth?
How many love Heaven and loathe the Earth?
How many think that we are not impearled?

There are many of all of these; and their ranks
Are growing as quickly as, on a stream's banks,
Grass grows, and flowers, and weeping willow trees.
But they are far uglier than all of these.
I smile at them, and turn away, with some thanks,

To embrace a life that lets me be strong and clever,
To embrace a life that will not me from my soul dissever,
To know the heights of joy and the depth of all sorrow.
I will have lived more, should I die tomorrow,
Than all who think they should die today to live forever.