University of Virginia Library

VERB. SAT. SAP.

Let Haeckel with his magisterial nod
Which shows his small acumen,
Deny the Being of his God (poor God!)
And deify Albumen;
He tells us Carbon is the source of all
By wondrous combination,
And snaps his fingers at mere Christ and Paul
With Science's salvation.
But how, I ask, did Carbon first combine
And get those happy forces,
Except from some great Mystery Divine
Or hidden sacred sources!
Give me the Great Unknown the awful X,
The Plus of all and Spencer;
And they may crown the meanest mollusc rex
To make the darkness denser.
Let grubby Camper set his fossil throne
With brother fossils round him,
On his pet intermaxillary bone—
A Goethe can confound him.
And let the os hyoides be the crux
Or crust of dry contention,
I humbly bow to the evolving Flux
And slow but sure ascension;
Let Darwin with his undecided nose
But views of grand decision
Find little room for God, whom seers disclose
That bring the truer vision.
Let sophists of the scientific kind
Demur to praise or mention
The One who is all works and laws behind,
Or honour with a pension!
I care not for collective wisdom's vow,
Or drum whoe'er may thump it;
I only see it falling ap'onou,
At the first penny trumpet.
And though Laplace did sweep through mighty space
To find no Blessed Being,
Yet that vast vision was His glorious Face,
And all he lacked was seeing.
The hand that holds the telescope is God's,
If mortals mark but Tophet,
Or poke among the gases and the clods
Before the Veilèd Prophet.
I know He is within me and without
And bridges every chasm,
Though pedants mock or pull his worlds about
Or prate of protoplasm.
And while from Him I could not, would not fly
Nor from His moulding Fingers,
The shadow of my far-off ancestry
Yet on me darkly lingers.
His heaven is Love, and there is burning hell
In any evil action;
But still the smallness of the parent shell,
Bequeathes a tell-tale fraction.
Yea, all the cries and passions of the Past,
The reptile, brute, and savage,
Toss in me like a surging sea upcast
And long to rend and ravage.
While all the pulses of a fairer morn
And worlds no words can utter,
The formless plumes of beauties yet unborn
Deep in my bosom flutter.