University of Virginia Library

One inward hope reads import into life:
We shall not wholly die, our best persists,
And we therein are of eternity.
Seek, it will yield not, through the ample range
Of circumstance, some perfect end of mind
Which man achieving, may desist, and say:
Should I die now and wholly cease to be,
I count it blessed to have lived. Is time
A foreword of eternity? Is that
Which men call life some transitory mode
Assumed by conscious and eternal truth
Of real being? Then are all things good.
Does the soul live? Then is there nothing mean
Or void of worth. Eternity abides
No trivial and no transitory act,
And time itself, which is a dream thereof,
Has issues passing through the infinite.
But if the testifying voice within,
Which utters forth the watchwords of the soul,
Lies in the dark place of our mystery,
Then life is nothing, for behold it ends!
And love is nothing, for that ends with life;
And sacrifice put up for others' weal
Is folly at white heat. A little while
And death shall swallow up our offering,
While that for which the sacrifice is made
Shall perish too. What then is left of all?
And what shall profit? To upraise the race
Is nothing, serves no purpose at the close;
For in a little age the race itself
Will also vanish—when the stars shall fall
And, drawn into the red sun's flaming font,
This earth shall feed her father and shall end.
Bold minds may face it, striving to extract
Some ghost of joy from very woe thereof,
But all is artifice and counterfeit—
All-worthless that which into nothing leads.

Black frost binds hard and holds the waste of life;
No phantom sun can warm it. Ah, perchance
There shall be morning on the hills! A light
All-proudly bursting from the eternal sun!
No frost is then too black to melt therein.
Nay, mark, it glistens: that is rime alone,
And all the bulbs and buds of blessed spring
Are waiting only the descending ray
To burst and blossom! It is here, the light
Which draws the tender plant of rising life
Up from some dark but serviceable soil
Wherein the sower's hand hath planted it;
And earth no more is barren: from the seed
A harvest springs, and the whole land is fill'd
With plenty.

On the winter of the mind
So also rises spiritual light,
And all our seeds of hope and thought begin
To germinate; the wilderness becomes
A planted ground which fructifies and blooms,
And this is presently a paradise
Wherein the soul descends, whose angel rule
Draws all the bitter order of the world
Full sweetly round into a perfect way.

Then not in vain shall man, forsaking sense,
Abide by choice in the domain of mind;
And not in vain shall soaring mind ascend
The solemn summits of uplifted thought—
There is the mead of souls. The crown is there.
No quest can fail whereof the end is this;
Wings shall not want when weary feet give way,
Angels shall bear us when our pinions tire,
And if the angels falter in the white
Flame of the holy place, One shall be there,
And under us the Everlasting Arms.