University of Virginia Library

The Past

Thou Past! What art thou? whither dost thou lead
Through countless generations fled away;
Empires, and races, that have left no trace,
Save in the nameless mound, or city's site,
Disputed oft, and called by different names.
Thou point'st to Nineveh, and storied Thebes,
To Aegypt's pyramids, and Paestum's fanes;
And say'st, with solemn, awe-inspiring voice,
“These are of yesterday, compared with Me.”
And still thou beckon'st on, with shadowy hand,
Through hoary epochs before man was made,
And at the head of the creation placed.
I pass gigantic forms, unknown to man,
Save by their impress, left upon the rock;
Or their huge bones dug from the miry clay;
Mammoth and Mastodon, and, stranger still,
The monsters of the Oolitic age.
And still beyond, amidst gigantic ferns,
And towering reeds, I pass; whose thick rank growth,
O'erwhelmed by fire and flood, was changed to coal;
Before the lofty mountains were upheaved.
Not there, nor in the central depths beneath,
I reach the boundaries of thy mighty realm.
Leaving the earth, I soar amidst the stars,
And far beyond the solar system range;
Where light, the swiftest messenger of God,
Has winged its arrowy flight for countless years,
Yet never reached the world to which 'twas sent!
Lost and bewildered, by the amazing thought,
In vain I seek above, as on the earth,
Thy origin; or what thou art, O Past!
Wearied with outward search, I turn within;
And, of my soul, I ask thy origin.
But vainly there would I explore thy depths.
For deeper mysteries within us lie,
Than in the world of time and sense without.
Of spirit's hidden essence, who can tell,
Or mark, by years, the time when it began?
The mind within its mighty thought can grasp
The laws, that bind the planets in their course,
Measure the stars' vast distance from the earth,
Predict the wandering comet's sure return,
Compel the elements to do its will.
In vain Philosophy would seek to read
The dark inscriptions on the human soul,
More ancient, and obscure than print of beast,
Or bird, or tree, left on the solid rock,
When the foundations of the earth were laid.
In God alone my wandering mind can rest,
In Him the Present, Past, and Future meet.
Though, to our weak view, succession marks
The history of man, and all we see;
And e'en our language echoes with the past;
Yet this is but our feeble, finite thought,
That sees not from beginning to the end.
He who, in the Beginning, formed the earth,
And woke the soul to conscious life and joy;
He fixed thy boundaries, O mysterious Past!
And crowned Thee monarch of thy mighty realm.
And He determined, when thy reign shall end,
And in our thought Eternity begin.