To Know the Kingdom
To know the Kingdom is to know the World
As a child knows –
A place to be seen as framed by fingers,
Surpassing Beauty glimpsed
Through squinted eyes without hazard or guess;
To live awake and unaware.
A fumbling forward in steps that are small
Because they must be;
Not because we wish for wider strides.
A boy only half-knows that in his heart
Hides a man made of dreams;
His faith is such that moves the mountains
And the trees — or at least makes to climb them.
His eyes are brightly lit and soul hemmed
Close to his Father’s knees.
He needs no song or doctrine to know
He is fearfully and wonderfully made.
The child sees with careless ease the world unseen,
Glancing up from play to glimpse invisible cities.
Like a freshly-fallen apple promised
For future joy upon the tongue or in the soil,
He is all at once most near the thing
He was grown to be, both fruit and seed;
A thing of joy his Father plucks at harvest
And, if dead and buried, a new thing made
To rise, and bud blossoms.
