Classic Poem

I.

When I consider all our scheming ways,
The unavailing care and skill man spends,
And ceaseless labor, reaching after ends
He fails in compassing; then, turning, gaze
On Nature, — see how through long, noiseless days
And silent nights, her quiet way she wends,
Sure of the goal to which her purpose tends,
Since every force her own mute force obeys, —
My heart grows restive, questioning why we
Thus baffled are, while Nature has her will;
We, sentient, wise, — she, groping, blind, and still.
The sphinx-like problem plagues me! Can it be
That were we groping, blind, even as she,
Fate, of itself, would our designs fulfil?

II.

Then Reason answers me: " O heart, forego
Such graceless, vain deduction! Otherwhere
Solution lies. " Man sows in toil and care,"
Thou sayest, " reaping failure." Is it so?
Then must it be that what he fain would grow
Were, on the whole, not best, and would not square
With God's designings. Nature does not share
Our mutinies: she is at one, we know,
With Him who fashioned her. Willing, though blind,
Obedient, though mute, she gropes her way
To surest issues. This, then, we may say,
That were we more at one with God's great mind,
Life to our wishes would be oftener kind,
Nor human schemes so often go astray. "