Classic Poem

O that some prophet would arise, His soul afire,
With zeal divine and awful ire
To shake us from our snug complacencies!
We are too self-assured,
By arrogance of prying intellect inured!
There is no marvel more!
The Heaven throbbing rhythmic with the stars;
The Sea that swells, heart-yearning for the moon,
In vague disquiet moaning at the bars;
The gladsome Earth all lavish with her boon
Of fruits and flowers varied in their store;
Clouds, winds, lightning, and the thunder's roar;
Naught above, below, around,
In the vision's farthest bound,
Awes our spirit with the brooding sense
Of Wisdom boundless and Omnipotence
And all pervading Love.
Alas, Alas!
Our eyes are dull and our souls grown crass.
We analyze and plod and prove,
We peer, dissect, combine and class,
Till the plodding brain holds a dreary mass
Of sounding nomenclature.
We label all with learned name
And then dismiss it with the same,
Deeming forsooth that all is told
And there is left no more the miracle of Nature!
Ah, fools we are, by pride made bold!
'Tis folly urges our pretence,
For not from wisdom springs irreverence.
Lo! dark beyond our grosser sense
Vast stretches the Unknown,
And deep within our finite zone
The mystery yet broods
That tempts us ever, yet ever eludes;
The same that greets us in humble guise
In the flower's tender beauty,
Looking forth with rapter eyes
From the soul awake in duty.
We pluck the flower, its petals tear,
We hold the leaves but the rose is where?
And where in the pleasure and pain of brute
Does soul of ours find aught to suit?
Ah! not in the primal push and blow
Of atoms blind, nor the cruel throe
Of brute with brute, is the meaning found.
But in the climbing, round by round,
Up from the mists to the glory-crowned,
The “yet to be,” the great “at Last,”
Latent in first, and revealed through the past.
So let the Troubler great arise
And with transfixing eyes
Scatter our complacencies ariot
And fill our spirits with a deep disquiet,
The sense of insufficiency and need
That humbles, chastens, yet in humbling doth but breed
A loftier hope and a diviner creed.