University of Virginia Library

But whatsoever he may dream or see
Of Facts acceptable in each degree
Of requisite assuredness;
Those lowlier, Logic proves yet must confess
Ne'er to be wholly fathomed—known;
Those loftier, best Emotions bid us own;
One feeling never will he cease to share,—
The cheery faith that all things, foul or fair,
For some wise purpose must be as they are;
The Evil but a scheme, half understood,
For better evolution of the Good!—
—Not cease; though ever will the sanguine-hearted,
With greater zeal by Time and Life imparted,
Swear fearless fealty in age as youth,
To highest Reason and all-questioning Truth!—
And ever will exclaim,
With thought as daring, earnestness the same:
“O heat of loving Heart! O light of chainless Mind!
When will conviction flash on dull mankind,
That you are One and True; to doubt you, false and blind!
And O, thou Great First Cause ineffable! O Being
In infinite ubiquitous persistence
By our conceptions inconceivable—to all our seeing
Invisible! yet forced upon us as unknown Existence
By all Existence known! O Thou
The source of Soul and Nature, Man and Brute
Whom in this sensuous deep thou dost immerse—
Thou hast ordained that deep shall still avow
Thyself—some shadow of Thyself reveal—
Potent o'er inmost consciousness to steal;
A conscious brooding Presence—through thy Universe
For ever everywhere intrusive—
For ever everywhere elusive—
Resistlessly suggestive, yet inexorably mute!—
Aye! strange the Mystery, and fathomable never,
Of everything that is—this actual Here and Now—
Impenetrable still—yet interpenetrated ever
With a divineness beaming through the dark,
Ubiquitous—unceasing!—from the highest cope
Of heaven with Astral Systems flung along its slope
To the minutest microscopic spark
Or speck of life obscure in air or earth or sea—
Some viewless animalcule—such a vivid shield
Of trembling rings of iridescent splendour
The very Rainbow by its side would yield
The palm—has no such glory to attend her
As we are startled to find there, unseen
By unassisted sense!—so manifest a glow
Of Beauty and Power transcendent from below
Rises to meet the Power and Beauty above
That through those star-worlds limitless expand—
And stealing through our Finite's dimmest screen,
Leavens the Universe with Light and Love!
Until we feel, we darkling men—
So darkling in our nook of narrow days
And cramping thoughts and creeping ways—
As in the midst, longing for light, between
That Infinitesimal and Infinite we stand—
Feel that the Finite's evil and its haze
Are destined to be lost, transfigured in the blaze
Of the abounding Presence, eloquent then,
Of that life-giving Beauty and Power divine—
Say rather, O Unnameable, of Thine!—
Thou—in this Mystery, starry-dark as night,
Yet beautiful and wonderful beyond the scope
Of utmost admiration—yet a pure delight,
A joy exhaustless by all thirst
For joy Thyself didst plant within us first,—
Thou hast ensured that we may rest
In one conviction not to be supprest—
For us whatever destiny
Thou dost ordain, must be the fittest—best!
Thou hast therein writ thy decree
It shall for Man for ever be
Inevitable to conclude Thee good and just;
Most rational to hold a boundless Hope;
Most inwardly ennobling utterly to trust
In the firm stronghold of the True and Right,
And widest Love's unconquerable might,
As best sustainment of his being's height—
Best revelation of Thy Will and Thee!—
Therefore we blench not! therefore boldly say:
‘O Man! thou momentary ray
Shot from the hidden Splendour far away—
Sheet-lightning gleam of a perceptive power
Taking wide Nature's surface for its dower;
O phantom-puppet of miraculous clay!
Thou that art launched into the infinite void
Upon thy sparkling bubble-world upbuoyed;
And—as an Insect on a floating leaf
Runs to and fro incapable of flight,
And works and waves in air its horns so slight,—
Dost ever, on thy voyage brief,
Keep stretching towards some unimagined goal
Hid in the blank abyss of Light
The feeble feelers of thy Soul!
Poor Atom on the Ocean of the All—
Hold bravely onward! faint not yet nor fall—
Some day shall come full answer to thy call!’”

Enough—the homely reel of Life we hold—
Of Amo's life and Ranolf's is unrolled;
She and her thoughtful thoughtless Wanderer bold,
Slight subjects of a lingering theme.
Faint visions of a too protracted dream,
Sink down—and like the ghosts of every-day,
The solid real flesh-phantoms—fade away!