But Even Mine Own Long-Lost Abandoned Home

Knowledge
by Richard Chenevix Trench
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. -- Wordsworth.

True knowledge is the waking up of powers
To conscious life, which were already ours.

What now is mine in leaf and flower and fruit,
Was mine before in blossom, bud, and root.

The writing that had faded quite, again
By chymic art comes out distinct and plain.

Springs that were stopped, when that is cleared away
Which choked them, bubble forth in open day.

The stars look forth at eve, which yet have been
All day in heaven, although till now unseen.

The dawn lights up the landscape; the great Sun
Shows, but not makes, the world he looks upon.

I found a rich pearl flung upon my coast,
Which yet no other than myself had lost.

I entered a large hall--no foreign dome,
But even mine own long-lost abandoned home.

In what at first appeared a stranger's face,
An ancient friend I daily learn to trace.

I am at rest--my centre I have found,
The circle's edge I had been wandering round.