Classic Poem

All power, all virtue, is repression — ye
Are stationary, and God keeps ye great;
Around your heads the fretful winds play free;
Ye change not — ye are calm and desolate.
What seems to us a trouble and a 'ate
Is but the loose dust streaming from your feet
And drifting onward — early ye sit and late,
While unseen Winds waft past the things that fleet.
So sit for ever, still and passionless
As He that made you! — thought and soul's distress
Ye know not, though ye contemplate the strife;
Better to share the Spirit's bitterest aches —
Better to be the weakest Wave that breaks
On a wild Ocean of tempestuous Life.