Thought
Backward, backward Thought has traveled,
Back into the dim unknown,
When the spheres in cosmic star-dust
Circled His eternal throne—
Back where cosmogonic darkness,
Wrought upon by Spirit light,
Yielded elemental centers
And protoplastic satellite.
Back, where first creative forces,
By impulsion from “The Cause,”
Start the universe in motion,
Guided by unerring laws—
Hurl the spheric fiery masses
Thro’ abysmal depths of space—
Meting out to each an orbit
With defined, unchanging place.
Thought, from thence, fares down the aeons
Thro’ the long chaotic night,
While His omnipresent agents
(Each a vast deific might)
Fashion to His will and purpose
Thro’ infinitude of spheres;
In our own group change evolving
Till Earth’s infant life appears—
Till creation felt Time’s fullness,
Surging thro’ unmeasured night,
That should rend the swathe of vapors
With command—“Let there be Light—”
Felt the rolling, tossing tumult
Of the fierce, internal sweep
When the thunder-toned volcanos
Lifted lands from shoreless deep.
Then, from formless void emerging,
Earth spread wide her fields and hills,
Woke the untrod glooms with music
Of her new-born leaping rills;—
Then the firmament, in grandeur,
Lit its unveiled depths of blue
With the moon in full-orbed beauty
And the young stars beaming through.
And the sunshine thrilled earth’s bosom,
Quickened germ-imprisoned life—
Soon the hillsides and the valleys
Were with floral beauty rife;—Forests
robed the mountain ranges,
Bound their sun-crooned brows with green,
While the mighty, sea-fed rivers
Rolled in majesty between.
Farther on in Life’s gradations
He who tuned the spheric roll,
Back in Nature’s barred Arcana,
Gave and clothed the human soul.
Hush, oh thought, nor dare to question
How creative laws adjust!
Canst thou comprehend Jehovah
Or the elemental “dust?”
Here, oh spirit, rest with child-faith;
Covet not forbidden things.
Life, the vainly sought for secret,
Proof, to us, of Godhood brings—
Of the Infinite, beyond us—
Far beyond the grasp of mind;—
Kneeling, trusting, here we worship
God—Jehovah, Undefined.