A cry between the silences; A shadow-birth of clouds at strife With sunshine on the hills of life A shaft from Nature's quiver cast Into the Future from the Past; Between the cradle and the shroud, A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud.
Thorough the vastness, arching all, I see the great stars rise and fall, The rounding seasons come and go, The tided oceans ebb and flow; The tokens of a central force, Whose circles, in their widening course, O'erlap and move the universe;
The workings of the law whence springs The rhythmic harmony of things, Which shapes in earth the darkling spar, And orbs in heaven the morning star. Of all I see, in earth and sky,-
Star, flower, beast, bird,-what part have I? This conscious life,-is it the same Which thrills the universal frame, Whereby the caverned crystal shoots, And mounts the sap from forest roots, Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells When Spring makes green her native dells? How feels the stone the pang of birth, Which brings its sparkling prism forth? The forest-tree the throb which gives The life-blood to its new-born leaves? Do bird and blossom feel, like me, Life's many-folded mystery,- The wonder which it is TO BE? Or stand I severed and distinct, From Nature's chain of life unlinked? Allied to all, yet not the less
Prisoned in separate consciousness, Alone o'erburdened with a sense Of life, and cause, and consequence?
In vain to me the Sphinx propounds The riddle of her sights and sounds; Back still the vaulted mystery gives The echoed question it receives. What sings the brook? What oracle Is in the pine-tree's organ swell? What may the wind's low burden be? The meaning of the moaning sea? The hieroglyphics of the stars? Or clouded sunset's crimson bars? I vainly ask, for mocks my skill The trick of Nature's cipher still.
I turn from Nature unto men, I ask the stylus and the pen;
What sang the bards of old? What meant The prophets of the Orient? The rolls of buried Egypt, hid In painted tomb and pyramid? What mean Idúmea's arrowy lines, Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs? How speaks the primal thought of man From the grim carvings of Copan ? Where rests the secret? Where the keys Of the old death-bolted mysteries? Alas! the dead retain their trust; Dust hath no answer from the dust.
The great enigma still unguessed, Unanswered the eternal quest; I gather up the scattered rays Of wisdom in the early days, Faint gleams and broken, like the light Of meteors in a northern night, Betraying to the darkling earth
The unseen sun which gave them birth • I listen to the sibyl's chant,
The voice of priest and hierophant; I know what Indian Kreeshna saith,
And what of life and what of death The demon taught to Socrates; And what, beneath his garden-trees Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread, The solemn-thoughted Plato said; Nor lack I tokens, great or small, Of God's clear light in each and all, While holding with more dear regard The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard, The starry pages promise-lit With Christ's Evangel over-writ, Thy miracle of life and death, O, holy one of Nazareth!
On Aztec ruins, gray and lone, The circling serpent coils in stone,- Type of the endless and unknown; Whereof we seek the clue to find, With groping fingers of the blind! Forever sought, and never found, We trace that serpent-symbol round Our resting-place, our starting bound! O, thriftlessness of dream and guess! O, wisdom which is foolishness! Why idly seek from outward things The answer inward silence brings; Why stretch beyond our proper sphere And age, for that which lies so near? Why climb the far-off hills with pain, A nearer view of heaven to gain? In lowliest depths of bosky dells The hermit Contemplation dwells. A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat, And lotus-twined his silent feet,
Whence, piercing heaven, with screened sight, He sees at noon the stars, whose light
Shall glorify the coming night.
Here let me pause, my quest forego;
QUESTIONS OF LIFE.
Enough for me to feel and know That he in whom the cause and end, The past and future, meet and blend,- Who, girt with his immensities, Our vast and star-hung system sees, Small as the clustered Pleiades,- Moves not alone the heavenly quires, But waves the spring-time's grassy spires, Guards not archangel feet alone,
But deigns to guide and keep my own; Speaks not alone the words of fate Which worlds destroy, and worlds create, But whispers in my spirit's ear,
In tones of love, or warning fear, A language none beside may hear.
To Him, from wanderings long and wild, I come, an over-wearied child, In cool and shade his peace to find, Like dew-fall settling on my mind. Assured that all I know is best, And humbly trusting for the rest, I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme, Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream Of power, impersonal and cold, Controlling all, itself controlled, Maker and slave of iron laws, Alike the subject and the cause; From vain philosophies, that try The seven-fold gates of mystery, And, baffled ever, babble still, Word-prodigal of fate and will; From Nature, and her mockery, Art, And book and speech of men apart, To the still witness in my heart; With reverence waiting to behold His Avatar of love untold,
The Eternal Beauty new and old!
I HAVE been thinking of the victims bound In Naples, dying for the lack of air
And sunshine, in their close, damp cells of pain, Where hope is not, and innocence in vain Appeals against the torture and the chain ! Unfortunates! whose crime it was to share Our common love of freedom, and to dare, In its behalf, Rome's harlot triple-crowned, And her base pander, the most hateful thing Who upon Christian or on Pagan ground Makes vile the old heroic name of king. O, God most merciful! Father just and kind! Whom man hath bound let thy right hand unbind. Or, if thy purposes of good behind
Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers find Strong consolations; leave them not to doubt Thy providential care, nor yet without The hope which all thy attributes inspire, That not in vain the martyr's robe of fire Is worn, nor the sad prisoner's fretting chain; Since all who suffer for thy truth send forth, Electrical, with every throb of pain, Unquenchable sparks, thy own baptismal rain Of fire and spirit over all the earth, Making the dead in slavery live again. Let this great hope be with them, as they lie Shut from the light, the greenness, and the sky,- From the cool waters and the pleasant breeze, The smell of flowers, and shade of summer trees; Bound with the felon lepers, whom disease
And sins abhorred make loathsome; let them share
Pellico's faith, Foresti's strength to bear Years of unutterable torment, stern and still, As the chained Titan victor through his will!
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