I
The centuries pass, yea as a dream they pass.
Nations and races, with all that they have sown,
Sink as the prairie-grass,
By the invisible scythe silently mown.
The wind breathes over them, and the place thereof
Knows them no more.
But the unsounded sky still broods above,
Blue ocean without shore,
Eternal in its breadth and depth and fire of love.
So the o’erbrooding Soul, purely ablaze,
Full-flooded with the light of God,
Outlasts Man’s body and all his works and ways,
Outlasts this little earth whereon he trod.