Great Eternity denies
The unfolding of its secrets
In the circle of thine eyes.
Charles Mackay,
Louisville, Kentucky, Jan. 31, 1858.
It is the function of the poet to realize and revere the mystery, but it is the duty of philosophy to explore and dissipate it, as far as possible, for mystery is the foe of human progress.
Mackay, though not the poet of psychic science, is profoundly the poet of practical, humanitarian progress, as was shown in his sublime poem, beginning,
“The man is thought a knave or fool,
Or bigot plotting crime,
Who for the advancement of his kind
Is wiser than his time.”