Classic Poem

The beauty of orchards is mine.
Orchards drooping heavy,
Lovely ladies pregnant, expectant.
Giant spruce-trees, monarchs of the years,
Which have seized the Earth with their
Compelling roots, as a lover seizes
His beloved, and have wrought a canopy of shadow.
The grey oaks, populous cities,
With ants, squirrels, owls and hawks, for citizens.
Balsamed and odorous pines which catch the breeze,
Holding it for a moment as satyrs hold nymphs;
Kissing it, releasing it, stamped with sweet odor.
Bright rivers and the irrigation-ditches,
Which stretch silver fingers into the Desert,
Beckoning tall poplars to stand beside them as sentinels.
The wonderful Mother is everlasting,
Beautiful in every part;
The lesser as well as the greater.
The pebbles of the brook are jewels;
The mountains emerald and amethyst,
Opal and sapphire;
The wilderness of flowers a gorget
From the Sun God's throat.
Beauty is not wasted though it endure but an hour:
The heavenly fires, which shall remain
When our earth is extinguished not more wonderful
Than the blossoms which bloom for a moment
That there may be fruit.
The flames of Night seem eternal.
Who beheld their lighting, or who shall see
Their fire grow dim?
Nevertheless, they will vanish,
Even as the flowers vanish.
And the loveliness of flowers is as
Eternal as the loveliness of flowers is as
Eternal as the loveliness of the spangled sky.
I have sought to commune with the stars,
But they will not answer.
Yet they seem to me not so eternal as I, myself,
And not so beautiful as my own aspirations.
The Infinite Mystery has begotten us both;
Indolently; negligently.
We are no more than the kelp or the starfish.
With the moth and the gnat we are equal.
Man is but a part,
Yet unto himself he is the whole and in his vanity
He refuses submission and attempts to instruct the Infinite.
He fulfills his destiny not at all,
Except as he follows the inscrutable Mystery
Which has begotten him.