Classic Poem

THE sombre eastern skies
Tremble with dawn's surprise,
The crescent radiance floods the impatient air;
The golden sunrise glow
Rises in overflow
Above the wide-spread fields and waters fair.

The moon low in the west
Sinks downward dispossest,
A pallid film of slowly-waning light;
A few stars linger yet,
Worsted and sore beset,
The remnants of the vanishing vanquished night.

But yonder day-god yields
The air's empurpled fields
To regnance of the star-crowned night in turn,
Possessing but half power,
And giving place and hour
To potencies that dimlier shine and burn.

Not such thy might, O Sun!
Who the mid place hast won
In the intellectual regions clear, serene;
Thy lofty centred throne
Abides thy rule alone,
Plato, who Life's profoundest Life hast seen.

Around thee flash and flame
All those of lesser name
Who have loved the Truth and felt her sacred spell,
Who, in the ideal sphere,
Beyond this realm of fear,
Have tasted waters of her secret well.

The Orient dim and vast
Before thy vision past
With hoary seers and old gigantic gods;
India, mother of lands,
Her mighty gates expands
To thee in her unfathomed periods.

And Egypt, vague and strange,
Unfolds the mystic range
Of all her priests and wonder-workers taught;
No peak remains unclimbed,
No utmost depth unmined
Within the wide-extending reach of Thought.

Into the light at length
Greece stepped in youthful strength,
The nursling of the aegis-bearing, blue-eyed queen;
Wisdom upon her smiled,
And called her darling child,
Favored and loved beyond all realms terrene.

White-haired Parmenides,
Across the tumbling seas
Of Generation's many-changing waste,
Saw shine the mystic One,
From whom all life begun,
And in whose round all things and times are placed.

Pythagoras, the mage,
Transcending clime and age,
Lived pure of stain, one with the Truth sublime;
He knew the dateless date
Of all souls' happy fate,
And Spirit's mastery of the sorcerer, Time.

Socrates, called the Wise,
Within whose kindly eyes
All goodness shone, and through whose conquering wit
Injustice clearly saw
Its self-destroying flaw,
And that the Right, by its own splendor lit.

Is king of worlds and men —
Martyr and denizen
Of that realm glorious, Love, the Seer, controls,
Girt by the reverence meet
Of all the gods, thy seat
Is next the Master's in the world of souls.

Thee all of them surround,
Plato, who passed the bound
Set by the learning of the wise of eld,
Thee for whom very Thought
Revealed its secret, and who sought
The One Ineffable and whose eyes beheld.

Thy words became the source
Whence Thought received its course
In ages subsequent and born of thine;
Great Aristotle knew
How much from thee he drew,
Pure gold brought from thine inexhausted mine.

Proclus, the dreamer high,
Sought thee beyond the sky
To fathom what thy deepest speech contains;
Plotinus into thee
Swooned in his ecstasy,
Being rapt unto the far empyreal plains.

In darkness all was lost,
And earth was tempest-tost
While thou wert hidden from the face of men;
Again thy sun arose
At the strange tempest's close,
And thou wast leader of the van again.

In Florence thy lost voice
Once more bade Life rejoice,
The bright Heaven of thy musings oped its doors;
Once more thy music rang,
And the vext heart upsprang
Into the light which from thy pages pours.

And in these final days
We have not failed to gaze
Where thy hand points, and thy most wondrous words
Recall us from the deep
Possession by earth's sleep,
And sing to us as very morning's birds.

Yea, birds of Heaven, indeed,
Not born of mortal seed,
And pouring thy swift thought across the years,
Thy swift exalting hope,
That looks beyond the slope
That leads down into this abode of tears.

Honored be thy great name,
Holy, and free from blame,
Thou who hast shone a star unto us all;
Monarch and wise art thou,
Around whose placid brow
The laurelled praises of the ages fall.