Classic Poem

Who can set a limit to the soul?
Who can explore the infinite?
Light, the swift messenger, which in the winking of
An eye can girdle the earth seven times,
Toils toward us half a million years bringing from
Some outer sentinel the message
Sent before man was " I am here. "
And if we reach to the finest stardust of
The Milky-way — what's beyond?
Infinite is space — but not more infinite than the soul.
I cannot reach to the uttermost bounds
Of the soul of the one I love.
No, not even of the one I love.
Though we are comrades and eagerly try
To approach each other,
There are spaces not to be crossed,
And we wander alone; as much as the moon is alone,
Eager but inexorably forbidden — yearning but inarticulate.
I cannot probe even my own soul.
It eludes me; dissolves and flies like a rainbow
Or the mist in deep canyons, where none can follow.
I am a stranger even to myself.
Mixed, compounded and conditioned by unknown forces
Which have harnessed the stars.
A mystery to myself; to my dear one, a mystery.
He who shall look upon the last sunset
May boast he has known the soul of Man.