Time is the cenotaph of things, of men.
Nature renews with touch incessant,—Death,—
Rears to decay, creates her round on round
Of still rejected being, scaling heaven,
To lay her vast perfection at its feet.
Numbers and dates, shoals of existences,
Myriads of ages to her hand are nought,—
Absolute artist in her least design
As in her greatest. With her rapid eye
She steals with lightning dash from worm to man,
Wriggles in the atom, walks along the brute,
Still to extend her still-extending plan.
Thou need not ask her, wherefore, why hawks
In mad descent dash at the sparrow's brain,
Or leaping pikes the little pikes engulf,—
Why in the volley of the surging main,
Man's fleets blow off like apples and o'erstrew
The Alps and Andes of the sunken world?
Not if she knew herself, where she was bent,
(That some have doubted) could she e'er reply.
Why should she answer,—thee?—or canst thou probe
With thy perfection, the unformed expanse
Of anxious fortune where thy being swims,
Even if its elements league with eternity,
And curvet on the blast sweeping the halls
Of the remotest heaven; or if the cup
Of thy existence vapours with the breath
That filled the clay, whence sprang all living forms?
With spines and veins, with hairs and nervatures,
Joints and articulations, leaves and cells,
She calls her varied creatures into space.
But what behind the ever-changeful thought,
If thus the checkers on her board arranged,
With what intention deals she her shrewd game,
And where shall man, feigning his ignorance
To be in league with her, at last arrive,—
Or is he but a leaf tossed on the wave
Creative, one more joint to pass along
To-morrow, to a meaner thing, a throw
Of her wise finger, then displaced.
Forbear!
Such speculation idling fools admit,
But in thy heart of hearts that truth discern,—
God to no worm denies his saving grace,
And in thy darkest hour of mental anguish,
Before his throne fall humbled, there fall,
With thy brief sorrow and thy infant thought,
Let drop the penury of self, and pray
That his true light that never set nor will
Upon the meanest, may o'erbloom thy dust,—
And heal the torture of thy narrow heart.
Nature renews with touch incessant,—Death,—
Rears to decay, creates her round on round
Of still rejected being, scaling heaven,
To lay her vast perfection at its feet.
Numbers and dates, shoals of existences,
Myriads of ages to her hand are nought,—
Absolute artist in her least design
As in her greatest. With her rapid eye
She steals with lightning dash from worm to man,
Wriggles in the atom, walks along the brute,
Still to extend her still-extending plan.
Thou need not ask her, wherefore, why hawks
In mad descent dash at the sparrow's brain,
Or leaping pikes the little pikes engulf,—
Why in the volley of the surging main,
Man's fleets blow off like apples and o'erstrew
The Alps and Andes of the sunken world?
Not if she knew herself, where she was bent,
(That some have doubted) could she e'er reply.
Why should she answer,—thee?—or canst thou probe
With thy perfection, the unformed expanse
Of anxious fortune where thy being swims,
Even if its elements league with eternity,
And curvet on the blast sweeping the halls
Of the remotest heaven; or if the cup
Of thy existence vapours with the breath
That filled the clay, whence sprang all living forms?
With spines and veins, with hairs and nervatures,
Joints and articulations, leaves and cells,
She calls her varied creatures into space.
But what behind the ever-changeful thought,
If thus the checkers on her board arranged,
With what intention deals she her shrewd game,
And where shall man, feigning his ignorance
To be in league with her, at last arrive,—
Or is he but a leaf tossed on the wave
Creative, one more joint to pass along
To-morrow, to a meaner thing, a throw
Of her wise finger, then displaced.
Forbear!
Such speculation idling fools admit,
But in thy heart of hearts that truth discern,—
God to no worm denies his saving grace,
And in thy darkest hour of mental anguish,
Before his throne fall humbled, there fall,
With thy brief sorrow and thy infant thought,
Let drop the penury of self, and pray
That his true light that never set nor will
Upon the meanest, may o'erbloom thy dust,—
And heal the torture of thy narrow heart.