Classic Poem

This life is a drama, a great panorama,
With strange alternations of joy and of woe;
Or are we but dreaming, and things only seeming?
For, save that we're ignorant, what do we know?

We're strange contradictions: our loves turn afflictions,
Our sweetest affections are scourges of flame;
There's strength in our weakness, there's pride in our meekness,
And near neighbors always are glory and shame.

Lovely humanities bloom among vanities,
Beamings of peace 'mid our tumult and strife;
Spiritualities close by realities,
Oh, who can read us the riddle of life?

And mere brute unreason comes duly in season,
As sure as the dewdrops and flowers of spring;
And Reason, astounded, stands dumb and contounded,
She out of the stern facts no reason can wring.

Behold the oppressor, the wrong's stern redresser,
The bane and the antidote both at a birth.
Is nothing disjointed? are all pre-appointed,
The saints and the sinners, the saviors of earth?

Oh, whence, and oh, whither have we been sent hither,
Without chart or compass the track to pursue;
Cast on a wild ocean of endless emotion
To buffet the waves with this terrible crew?

We journey as strangers this desert of dangers,
And, 'mid all our knowledge, is this all we know?
The road's long and dreary, we're wayworn and weary,
We vanish, and who can tell whither we go?