University of Virginia Library

From life's first dawn till now, when life's new stress
Drives all things swifter into consciousness,
Earth has been full of those strange secret things
Which we touch sometimes in our quickenings.
So in the veils which commonly divide
From what we vaguely term the further side,
Rent or thin place makes possible to see
That which encompasses so pressingly.
There is no man, however steep'd in sense,
But can recall some such experience,
When dusk or dark or daylight dimly gave
Suggestions which are deeper than the grave,
Till soul in body for a moment felt
Contact with souls that in no flesh have dwelt.
'Tis then we know there is a houseless host
Of incomplete humanities, of ghost
And spectral people, who, from dregs and lees
And depths of stagnant and unconscious seas
Exhaled, their evolution's course begin,
But, though remote, are still our kith and kin,
And by the process of the years advanced
Shall reach, like us, their share of light enhanced.
You cannot draw your blinds at eventide
And not leave thousands in the dark outside;
You cannot fling the windows wide at morn
But there are thousands, as on sunbeams borne:
Sad is their lot, midst all their crowds alone,
To none responding and by all unknown.
And yet the pity in the human heart
For life's great travail, of which theirs is part,
By solidarity of all things here,
Helps such poor souls, so far and yet so near;
Just as our kindness to the dear, dumb beasts
First hallows us, making us Nature's priests,
Then helps their prison'd yearning to assuage,
And lastly leads them in their pilgrimage.

Ah! pity, tenderness and love—these three
And the Great God above—and these are He!