 | The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder |  |
DESTINY
(AFTER READING A WORK ON ASTRONOMY)
I see it all; my soul the dregs hath drunkOf man's last, helpless, hopeless destiny;
Born of the primal ooze, where slow light sunk,
And climbing to the secrets of the sky;
Through countless million years the spiral mounts
Till nature, a companionable slave,
Bows to man's bidding; lo, then, the deep founts
Run gradual dry, earth turns its own chill grave:
The insatiate desert marches on the sown,
The sea exhales, the very air is gone,
And, gasping in the silent void, the race
Dies with the planet.—But not this the doom
Of man's outlooking soul; that hath no tomb,
Being quenchless as the law and lord of space.
| The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder | |