Ranolf and Amohia A dream of two lives. By Alfred Domett. New edition, revised |
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 | Ranolf and Amohia |  |
XII.
Yet of this First Intelligence confessed
Ineffable, may nought be fairly guessed?
Can we in sober reason think or feign
The ALL an Imperfection? or maintain
The Absolutely Perfect, an Ideal,
A Fancy, nowhere actual proved or real?
But say 'tis realised; what wonder we
Seeing so little of that All should be
Unable to discern how what is styled
‘Evil’ by us, through Nature running wild,
Can be with such Perfection reconciled?
A full round Moon the Universal Scheme,
We catch the Crescent's ragged golden gleam;
In Man's wide Faiths if hoary Light be found
Would feebly reillume the faded round,
Faint reflex of far glory!—'tis mayhap
Real as that ‘old Moon in the new Moon's lap’!
Ineffable, may nought be fairly guessed?
Can we in sober reason think or feign
The ALL an Imperfection? or maintain
The Absolutely Perfect, an Ideal,
A Fancy, nowhere actual proved or real?
But say 'tis realised; what wonder we
Seeing so little of that All should be
Unable to discern how what is styled
‘Evil’ by us, through Nature running wild,
Can be with such Perfection reconciled?
69
We catch the Crescent's ragged golden gleam;
In Man's wide Faiths if hoary Light be found
Would feebly reillume the faded round,
Faint reflex of far glory!—'tis mayhap
Real as that ‘old Moon in the new Moon's lap’!
But since on two great negatives profound
Science and Metaphysics are at one,
And all their mightiest Masters most renowned—
Grant Darkness all its grandeur—own that none
Can prove ‘Divine Existence’ cannot be;
While for its ‘nature,’ all alike agree
Your Kants and Newtons, Doctors wigged and gowned,
Helpless as smockfrocked Hobnail at his plough,
Baffled before that mystery must bow;
On what compulsion must good sense allow
That this Unknown ‘First Cause’ in deed or will
Has just but so much power for good and ill
As in the Universe we see displayed?
When even the fraction seen of Power—Skill—Mind—
Say in that play of Atoms, so transcends
All human estimate, even Science ends
Her coolest quest bewildered and half blind?
Were it not then a paradox most strange
Should finite Mind, thus paralysed before
Its best-proved Actual, limit and degrade
All possible Existence to the range
Of what its impuissance can conceive?
We say, nor—Sages Positive!—ignore
What truths you teach, 'tis harder to believe
That which has done so much cannot do more
And all the Evil that exists retrieve
With compensating Good somewhere in store—
Than that the fault lies with the human Mind,
Too weak or lowly-placed the cause to find
Why from the first throughout the Universe
The best has not excluded all the worse.
Science and Metaphysics are at one,
And all their mightiest Masters most renowned—
Grant Darkness all its grandeur—own that none
Can prove ‘Divine Existence’ cannot be;
While for its ‘nature,’ all alike agree
Your Kants and Newtons, Doctors wigged and gowned,
Helpless as smockfrocked Hobnail at his plough,
Baffled before that mystery must bow;
On what compulsion must good sense allow
That this Unknown ‘First Cause’ in deed or will
Has just but so much power for good and ill
As in the Universe we see displayed?
When even the fraction seen of Power—Skill—Mind—
Say in that play of Atoms, so transcends
All human estimate, even Science ends
Her coolest quest bewildered and half blind?
Were it not then a paradox most strange
Should finite Mind, thus paralysed before
Its best-proved Actual, limit and degrade
All possible Existence to the range
Of what its impuissance can conceive?
We say, nor—Sages Positive!—ignore
70
That which has done so much cannot do more
And all the Evil that exists retrieve
With compensating Good somewhere in store—
Than that the fault lies with the human Mind,
Too weak or lowly-placed the cause to find
Why from the first throughout the Universe
The best has not excluded all the worse.
And more preposterous it is to dream
The Universe is an abortive scheme,
Worked by a Power unequal to its task,
Or its presumed incompetence to mask,
Than that the vast Obscure which round us lies,
Somehow—somewhere—the Being must comprise
Our most exalted Nature must demand;
Reality than our Ideal more grand;
And therefore, in some way least understood,
Nay, which the Finite could not understand,—
Perfectly wise—just—powerful—loving—good!
The Universe is an abortive scheme,
Worked by a Power unequal to its task,
Or its presumed incompetence to mask,
Than that the vast Obscure which round us lies,
Somehow—somewhere—the Being must comprise
Our most exalted Nature must demand;
Reality than our Ideal more grand;
And therefore, in some way least understood,
Nay, which the Finite could not understand,—
Perfectly wise—just—powerful—loving—good!
To Reason less repugnant seems this creed,
And less credulity than theirs to need
Who for ‘First Cause’ in blind Momentum trust,
Or find Divinity in finer dust.
And less credulity than theirs to need
Who for ‘First Cause’ in blind Momentum trust,
Or find Divinity in finer dust.
| Ranolf and Amohia | |