I am a little church (no great cathedral)

far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities

I do not worry if briefer days grow briefest

I am not sorry when sun and rain make April

My life is the life of the reaper and the sower

my prayers are prayers of Earth's own clumsily striving

(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children

whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

Around me surges a miracle of unceasing

birth and glory and death and resurrection:

over my sleeping self float flaming symbols of hope

and I wake to a perfect patience of mountains

I am a little church (far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)

at peace with nature

I do not worry if longer nights grow longest

I am not sorry when silence becomes singing

Winter by spring, I lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him

Whose only now is forever

standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence

(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

-E.E. Cummings