Classic Poem

I sought God in the caverns of the Ages,
But they were empty.
I pushed aside the tapestries of Night
And tore down rudely
The star-sown arras of the Years,
Yet always I found only desolation.
I loosed my soul upon the backward path
But it was lost in mists,
And I was frightened by the silence.
I stood upon the peaks of Thought
And tried to pierce the clouds of Being,
But was dizzy with the infinite.
I called into impenetrable vacancy,
And was not answered.
I heard no voice.
I saw no hand; no face.
My soul rent the veil before the sanctuary of clouds
And rushed in with the rebellious lightning;
But there was nothing.
I shod my spirit with the winged slippers of the Wind,
And pried curiously into every corner.
All was emptiness and a great stillness.
I seized the Sun by his burning beard
And questioned him,
But he was without knowledge.
I clung to the chariot-wheels of the Stars,
But was flung back to earth, and they passed on.
Then I knew there is no God.

I, myself, am God and a maker of gods.
To be myself, the only godhood.
To bud, to bloom, to fruit, and from the fruit
New growth.
To express myself fully, absolutely, cruelly
Or I am a dead thing.
To be myself, or I prevent God-birth;
Existence, the supreme godhood.
Unless I am determinedly myself,
I have taken the great gift and belied it.
I have broken the everlasting chain.
I am a link that has failed.
I will not weary the stars with prayers,
But will fill the world with myself,
Even as the air encompasses the Earth,
And the fragrance of lilacs pervades the entire night.
I will not taint the air with incense,
But will go to the flowers and say:
" Brothers, I, too, insist on my own quality,
" Even though it seems not sweet to others. "
The skunk-cabbage, golden and hopeful
In the woody swamp,
Refuses not its life because its odor
Is not applauded.
It betrays not its part
Because I do not approve its allotted smell.
Why should I, with fear-shaken hands,
Supplicate the clouds,
Or grovel, face-downward, in the grass,
Who am myself the clouds, and more;
The grass, and more;
Offspring of Nature, the supremest God,
Myself, for myself her supremest part,

Wresting from her my own god-head,
And interpreting to her the God which is to be;
Yet I am not greater than others.
What is it to me that Nature also
Must pass down the endless channel?
For me, my own life is eternity;
Though it be a short race between two pillars,
Nevertheless, it is for me eternity;
The beginning and the end of Time.

Man continually evolving,
Eager, thirsting, changing, curious;
Restlessly studying his soul.
Man to himself sufficient;
Exclusive, absorbing, complete;
All-important; a maker of gods;
And I a worker in the toy-shop,
Seriously insisting that my toy also
Be gilded and appraised.
By chance it, too, may be a god.

The stars have mocked me,
But I have laughed back at them.
What, because your beards are flame,
Your lives longer
And your graves the enormous ether,
Shall you mock me?
Is not an end the end?
Is not a life, life?
And what is life?
And when is the end?
Why do you not cover your scintillating brows
And petulantly cast yourselves into the infinite abyss,
Because you, too, will come at last into
The dark and chilly vault?
Do you not, nevertheless, gloriously drive the fiery wheels
Of your wagons their appointed race?
And the butterfly, so carefully painted,
Daintily decorated with infinite solicitude,
Does it refuse to blossom upon the air
Because its destiny is but an hour?
If its hour be sunny and it luxuriate
In the heart of a hollyhock,
Or if its hour be rainy and it lies broken
In the roots of the grass,
Nevertheless, it has lived,
And in the daintily-woven
Chrysalis of its caterpillar
Will carefully hand on to a coming Summer
The rich embroidery of its wings.
Shall I despairingly cast myself face downward
Among the fallen leaves and cry out,
" It is vain. It is vain " ?
Shall I betray Life because, like the leaves,
I must, with allotted brevity, return to another duty?
Are not the leaves beautiful in death?
They have expressed themselves;
They have done their part.

Death is an infinite sea,
Which in its widest sweep
Touches the shore of Life.
Does the sunset withhold its glory
Because Night advances to swallow it?
Or Night stay its wonder because
It will pale to a new day?
Shall Spring tear off her garlands
And deny the overture of birds
Because Summer comes quickly?
Or Summer lie by the brook and sigh
Because presently she too dies?
Or Autumn, like a sour churl, refuse his fruits
Because Winter has a sword at his throat?
Nay, because of Winter, he urges his abundance,
And busily tramples the grapes in the wine-press.
He is more prodigal of gifts because
Soon comes barrenness.

Death is Life in its immensity.
It sets the house in order for the new tenant.
Shall I be rebellious because I make way for the new?
I am not the Whole, but a part of the Whole.
There are stars beyond counting
Which, with far solicitude, overhang the Night.
There are many blades of grass
Which nurse lowly upon the earth.
Each is of the Whole and assumes not to say,
" Behold me! I am the only one. "
Yet each is determined desperately to be itself,
As if there were none other.
Relentlessly itself; that through it
The indefinite Past and the indefinite Future
May be united.
If I be not ruthlessly myself,
And have betrayed the imprisoned Future
I have despised the fecund Past which made me,
Which holds up to me imploring hands.
If I suffer not my brother to be himself,
I have torn the scarf embroidered by
The fingers of the Stars.
I have befouled the cloisters of the Ages.

I will not shroud my soul in despair
And wail piteously because I must stand alone
Before the door of Oblivion
And enter reluctantly, without guide; without companion.
Why should I whine, like a frightened dog
Lost from its master?
I know that I, too, am a sentinel
Imperious as Orion,
Set upon a celestial watch;
Sending my thoughts out to the Pleiades
Feeling the breath of the Archer;
A sentinel, pacing the star-built battlements
Of Eternity,
Of Eternity,
Charged with obligation to the dead
And those to come.
I will be honorably relieved from my guard
When the burden of the night is heavy
And the Morning Star pales in the East.
I pushed aside the curtains of the Universe
And looked in, and there,
In a great loneliness, never to be broken,
Brooded my own soul.
I said to myself, " I will carve god-hood
" Out of manhood.
" I will carve God out of myself. "