Poetry Archives

If Luther’s day expand to Darwin’s year,
Shall that exclude the hope—foreclose the fear?


Unmoved by all the claims our times avow,
The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of
    shade;
And comes Despair, whom not her calm may
    cow,
And coldly on that adamantine brow
Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade.
But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant
    turns)
With blood warm oozing from her wounded
    trust,
Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns
The sign o’ the cross—the spirit above the dust!

  Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate—
The harps of heaven and dreary gongs of hell;
Science the feud can only aggravate—
No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell:
The running battle of the star and clod
Shall run forever—if there be no God.

  Degrees we know, unknown in days before;
The light is greater, hence the shadow more;
And tantalized and apprehensive Man
Appealing—Wherefore ripen us to pain?
Seems there the spokesman of dumb Nature’s
    train.

  But through such strange illusions have they
    passed
Who in life’s pilgrimage have baffled striven—
Even death may prove unreal at the last,
And stoics be astounded into heaven.

  Then keep thy heart, though yet but
    ill-resigned—
Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind;
That like the crocus budding through the
    snow—
That like a swimmer rising from the deep—
That like a burning secret which doth go
Even from the bosom that would hoard and
    keep;
Emerge thou mayst from the last whelming
    sea,
And prove that death but routs life into victory.