Complete Collection

by James Allen

Would you scale the highest heaven Would you scale the highest heaven, Would you pierce the lowest hell,— Live in dreams of constant beauty, Or in basest thinkings dwell. For your thoughts are heaven above you, And your thoughts are hell below ; Bliss is not, except in thinking, Torment naught but thought can know. Worlds would vanish but for thinking ; Glory is not but in dreams ; And the Drama of the ages From the Thought Eternal streams. Dignity and shame and sorrow, Pain and anguish, love and hate Are but maskings of the mighty Pulsing Thought that governs Fate. As the colours of the rainbow Make the one uncoloured beam, So the universal changes Make the One Eternal Dream. And the Dream is all within you, And the Dreamer waileth long For the Morning to awake him To the living thought and strong. That shall make the ideal real, Make to vanish dreams of hell In the highest, holiest heaven Where the pure and perfect dwell. Evil is the thought that thinks it ; Good, the thought that makes it so ; Light and darkness, sin and pureness Likewise out of thinking grow. Dwell in thought upon the Grandest, And the Grandest you shall see; Fix your mind upon the Highest, And the Highest you shall be.