WHEN I SURVEY
’Tis midnight and I am in the country!
The world is still and all the lights are out
Save for the ones which stud the firmament
With diamond clusters everywhere about.
Like royal David pondering the Heaven
I stand uncovered, torn and battle-spent
And from my flocking meditations driven
By spectral bears and lions; but not as he
Victorious, for the raveners I smote
Were modern pride and doubt which stalked my faith
For its ewe-lamb of trust and by the throat
Dragged it away from me to bleating death.
My staff is broken and the scroll I read
A thousand nights like this lies crumpled where
I flung it as with fevered brow I fled
In mocking disillusion and despair
From burnt-out wicks still sputtering in the oil
Of self-illumination with the quizz
“What am I? What the infinite I Am?”
God! If the answer were in spirit-toil
Or as the echo of Whatever Is!
The stars smile down on me undimmed and calm.
My soul! Have I so many years been blind
To all the glories wheeling o’er my head
And starry with the challenge of my quest?
Orion jewel-girdled and behind
Coursing his dogs, in mighty combat strange
With red-eyed Taurus!
And the Charioteer
Flashing toward the goal in full career!
The thrice-immortal Twins the chase abreast,
Cheering the race but keeping out of range
Of Ursa’s long, lean paws where his huge frame
Looms in the Polar Circle!
Farther south
The Lion’s crouching form, with gleaming eyes
And shadowy mouth!
The Plowman of the skies,
Proud of Arcturus’ fame!
And Hercules
Setting his giant heel upon the fang
Of the unwieldy Dragon; while beyond
The Serpent’s Crown makes mockery of the deed!
Far over by a handful of degrees
Imperial Vega rides the horizon,
Harped on by Lyra, as when morning sang
The genesis of systems God-decreed.
Already shines afar the Northern Cross
Where else were only dreariness and dark,
Like flaming symbol of a holy Cause
Which bore its ensign up the Winter arc
And more divinely glowed with sacred fire
Than the tiaraed Lady of the Chair
With dazzling looks, or than her daughter whom
Impetuous Perseus, thinking her so fair,
Delivered by the right of passion from
The Beast with jaws of grossness open wide.
Nor would I miss the Eagle, argus-eyed
And swift on wings of night.
What! Call this Night,
With thousand thousand suns in timeless space
So vast that distance gives no parallax
And centuries untold would pass ere light
From the remotest wanderer could burn!
So vast yon fires are a hundred-fold
More luminous than ours to them in turn,
And it in lost direction would dissolve
From Earth’s own lode-star here yclept the Pole!
So vast that hosts so numberless revolve
In unison as no assembled whole
Of man’s most perfect mechanism moves,
Yet by the which he boasts perpetual noon
As though the elements he late improves
And plays them in a more triumphant tune.
What! Call this Night and our small dial Day
Because by it we see ourselves and then
As mere automatons! Such is the way
Of over-conscious men; why, even I
An hour since called light a flickering lamp,
Philosophy the palimpsest of pedants,
The universe a papier-mache script,
While on it egotism’s ink was still too damp
And speculation dript.
But as I mount the Great Highway of Pearl
Which turns to diamonds where its steeds strike hoof
And chariot-wheels o’er the arena whirl
Until the course is flashing flint and fire—
How my soul thrills with this real vision of
The truth no lips can utter—with desire
To feel, not name, the Maker!
Night is Day
To eyes which earth’s diurnal sun had blinded
But now see glory, majesty, design,
Love eternal-minded, Will divine,
Swinging out censers, filling space with throne-rooms,
Ordering the times of destiny,
Making music and revealing purpose
Perfect but unthinkable, yet in man
Tuning a chord of nature in response
To fugitive notes of a melodious plan,
To stray scintillas of a Master-spell,
That we might have sufficient just of sense
To throb with feeling of theophany,
Just awe enough of the Ineffable
Out of our pinpoint nothingness to cry
“What is man that Thou art mindful of him?
And what is he that he should give a Name
Which we with lips vainglorious can laud,
A shape of Person to the Great I AM
Before we deign to worship Him as God?”