A MEDITATION ON THE SUN

Come, let us think upon the great that came

Our spiritual solar-kings, whose fame

Is quenchless in the lands of mental light,

High planets in the vast historic game:

Youths from the sky, they came in splendid flight.

We hold to them as to our day and night,

And by them measure out our moments here,

Our greatness, littleness, and wrong and right.

For like the sun, we carry yesteryears

Within our wallets: all the ancient fears

And scorns and triumphs woven in our cloaks,

Our tall plumes bought with some lost race’s tears.

Oh Sun, I wish that all the nations bright

You ever looked upon were in my sight,

That I had stood up in your royal car

With your eye-rays to search out field and height:

To see young David, leading forth his sheep,

The Christ Child on the Hill of Nazareth sleep,

To watch proud Dante climb the stranger’s stairs,

To see the ocean round Columbus leap.

And beauty absolute man’s heart has known

In those old hills where the Greek blood was sown,

They named you young Apollo in that day

And served you well, and loved your chariot-throne.

Would I had looked on Venice in her prime.

And long had watched the prayerful Gothic time

When Notre Dame arose, a mystery there

In wicked good old Paris and its grime!

Oh light, light, light! Oh Sun your light is good.

You stir the sap of garden, field and wood,

Of men and ages. And your deeds are fair,

And by this light, is God’s love understood.

So let us think upon Creation’s days

And Great Jehovah Moses came to praise:—

The God the Hebrews said excelled the sun,

To whom all psalms are due, who made the ways

The sun shall follow till he burns no more

Till he is cold and clinkered to the core.

Praise God, and not the sun too much, my soul,

The God behind the sun we must adore.

III

Oh Sun, that yet will my spring thoughts astound,

How often this lone mendicant you found

Stripped in your presence of all earthly things.

A happy dervish whirling round and round.

You were his tree of incense and his feast,

You were his wagon and his harnessed beast,

His singing brother, yet his tyrant hard,

With whip and spur and shout that never ceased.

He thought of Freedom that rides round with you

Healing the nations with a crystal dew,

The comrade of your car, with Science there,

Making the ways of men forever new.

Would we might lift a mighty battle-cry.

Nations and mendicants, and shake your sky:

Would that you caught us singing as one man

That song I sang when begging days began

Hearing it in every beam on high:

“Man’s spirit-darkness shall forever die.”