Classic Poem

Oh, why are darkness and thick cloud
Wrapped close forever round the throne of God?
Why is our pathway still in mystery trod?
None answers, though we call aloud.

The seedlet of the rose
While still beneath the ground,
Think you it ever knows
The mystery profound
Of its own power of birth and bloom,
Until it springs above its tomb?

The caterpillar
Its mean life in the dust,
Or hangs upon the walls,
A dead aurelian crust.
Think you the larva ever knew
Its gold-winged flight before it flew?

When from the port of Spain
Columbus sailed away,
And down the sinking main
Moved toward the setting day,
Could any words have made him see
The new worlds that were yet to be?

The boy with laugh and play
Fills out his little plan,
Still lisping, day by day,
Of how he'll be a man;
But can you to his childish brain
Make aught of coming manhood plain?

Let heaven be just above us,
Let God be e'er so high,
Yet, howsoe'er he love us,
And howe'er much we cry,
There is no speech that can make clear
The thing that " doth not yet appear. "

'Tis not that God loves mystery:
The things beyond us we can never know
Until up to their lofty height we grow,
And finite grasps infinity.