There's heaven above, and night by night

       I look right through its gorgeous roof;

     No suns and moons though e'er so bright

       Avail to stop me; splendor-proof

       I keep the broods of stars aloof:

     For I intend to get to God,

       For 't is to God I speed so fast,

     For in God's  breast, my own abode,

       Those shoals of dazzling glory, passed,

       I lay my spirit down at last.                            10

     I lie where I have always lain,

       God smiles as he has always smiled;

     Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,

       Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled

       The heavens, God thought on me his child;

     Ordained a life for me, arrayed

       Its circumstances every one

     To the minutest; ay, God said

       This head this hand should rest upon

       Thus, ere he fashioned star or sun.                      20

     And having thus created me,

       Thus rooted me, he bade me grow,

     Guiltless forever, like a tree

       That buds and blooms, nor seeks to know

       The law by which it prospers so:

     But sure that thought and word and deed

       All go to swell his love for me,

     Me, made because that love had need

       Of something irreversibly

       Pledged solely its content to be.                        30

     Yes, yes, a tree which must ascend,

       No poison-gourd foredoomed to stoop!

     I have God's warrant, could I blend

       All hideous sins, as in a cup,

       To drink the mingled venoms up;

     Secure my nature will convert

       The draught to blossoming gladness fast:

     While sweet dews turn to the gourd's hurt,

       And bloat, and while they bloat it, blast,

       As from the first its lot was cast.                      40

     For as I lie, smiled on, full-fed

       By unexhausted power to bless,

     I gaze below on hell's fierce bed,

       And those its waves of flame oppress,

       Swarming in ghastly wretchedness;

     Whose life on earth aspired to be

       One altar-smoke, so pure!—to win

     If not love like God's love for me,

       At least to keep his anger in;

       And all their striving turned to sin.                    50

     Priest, doctor, hermit, monk grown white

       With prayer, the broken-hearted nun,

     The martyr, the wan acolyte,

       The incense-swinging child—undone

       Before God fashioned star or sun!

     God, whom I praise; how could I praise,

       If such as I might understand,

     Make out and reckon on his ways,

       And bargain for his love, and stand,

     Paying a price, at his right hand?                         60

     NOTES

     "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" presents the doctrine of

     predestination as it appears to a devout and poetic soul whose

     conviction of the truth of such a doctrine has the strength of a

     divine revelation. Those elected for God's love can do nothing to

     weaken it, those not elected can do nothing to gain it, but it is

     not his to reason why; indeed, he could not praise a god whose ways

     he could understand or for whose love he had to bargain.

     Johannes Agricola: (1492-1566), Luther's secretary, 1519, afterward

     in conflict with him, and author of the doctrine called by Luther

     antinomian, because it rejected the Law of the Old Testament as of

     no use under the Gospel dispensation.  In a note accompanying the

     first publication of this poem, Browning quotes from "The Dictionary

     of All Religions" (1704): "They say that good works do not further,

     nor evil works hinder salvation; that the child of God cannot sin,

     that God never chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, etc., are

     sins in the wicked but not in him, that the child of grace being

     once assured of salvation, afterwards never doubteth . . . that God

     doth not love any man for his holiness, that sanctification is no

     evidence of justification."  Though many antinomians taught thus,

     says George Willis Cooke in his "Browning Guide Book," it does not

     correctly represent the position of Agricola, who in reality held

     moral obligations to be incumbent upon the Christian, but for

     guidance in these he found in the New Testament all the principles

     and motives necessary.