Classic Poem

O MOUNT of the Vision Unbarred!
O vast sky-shouldering peak!
Who seest the ships as they pass
Afar on the rim of the sea;
Who seest the late sun glint
On the ocean stream of the north;
Who seest around at thy feet
The devious rivers that haste
With their tribute to south and to north,
The lakes where the rivers paused
Smit by a thought of the sea,
And the lands like islands between;
Who seest above thee the arch
Of a mightier heaven than ours—
Tell me, in all thou hast seen,
Where hast thou found the Divine?

Then out of the murmurs grew speech—
From the wind-wrestling pines on the slopes,
From the splash of a myriad rills,
From the echoing caverns within:
Sacred is all that I see—
The heavens by day and by night,
The lands with their forests and glades,
The lakes eying me and the sky,
The silvery lacing of streams,
The eagle that wheels o'er my head,
The panther that lurks on the bough,
The insect that hums in the grass,
The grass, the flowers, and the trees,
Are sacred all in my sight.

But what, I cried, is Divine?
Then slowly the Mountain replied:
One thing alone have I seen
Betwixt the dust and the stars,
One thing only Divine—
The upturned face of a man,
That, looking aloft beyond me,
Beyond the unfathomed abyss,
The moon, the sun, and the stars,
Beholds and bears as a seal,
The light of the Vision Divine,
A light shed not by the moon
Nor the sun, nor the uttermost star,
That the loftiest peak may not catch,
Nor the wide arms of ocean enfold,
But it falls from the Radiance Divine
On the upturned face of a man.