| |
| WHERE broods the Absolute, | |
| Or shuns our long pursuit | |
| By fiery utmost pathways out of ken? | |
| Fleeter than sunbeams, lo, | |
| Our passionate spirits go, | 5 |
| And traverse immemorial space, and then | |
| Look off, and look in vain, to find | |
| The master-clew to all they left behind. | |
| |
| White orbs like angels pass | |
| Before the triple glass, | 10 |
| That men may scan the record of each flame,— | |
| Of spectral line and line | |
| The legendry divine,— | |
| Finding their mould the same, and aye the same, | |
| The atoms that we knew before | 15 |
| Of which ourselves are made,—dust, and no more. | |
| |
| So let our defter art | |
| Probe the warm brain, and part | |
| Each convolution of the trembling shell: | |
| But whither now has fled | 20 |
| The sense to matter wed | |
| That murmured here? All silence, such as fell | |
| When to the shrine beyond the Ark | |
| The soldiers reached, and found it void and dark. | |
| |
| Seek elsewhere, and in vain | 25 |
| The wings of morning chain; | |
| Their speed transmute to fire, and bring the Light, | |
| The co-eternal beam | |
| Of the blind minstrel’s dream; | |
| But think not that bright heat to know aright, | 30 |
| Nor how the trodden seed takes root, | |
| Waked by its glow, and climbs to flower and fruit. | |
| |
| Behind each captured law | |
| Weird shadows give us awe; | |
| Press with your swords, the phantoms still evade; | 35 |
| Through our alertest host | |
| Wanders at ease some ghost, | |
| Now here, now there, by no enchantment laid, | |
| And works upon our souls its will, | |
| Leading us on to subtler mazes still. | 40 |
| |
| We think, we feel, we are; | |
| And light, as of a star, | |
| Gropes through the mist,—a little light is given; | |
| And aye from life and death | |
| We strive, with indrawn breath, | 45 |
| To somehow wrest the truth, and long have striven, | |
| Nor pause, though book and star and clod | |
| Reply, Canst thou by searching find out God? | |
| |
| As from the hollow deep | |
| The soul’s strong tide must keep | 50 |
| Its purpose still. We rest not, though we hear | |
| No voice from heaven let fall, | |
| No chant antiphonal | |
| Sounding through sunlit clefts that open near; | |
| We look not outward, but within, | 55 |
| And think not quite to end as we begin. | |
| |
