Chartings
There is no moon, only the sea and stars;
There is no land, only the vessel’s bow
On which I stand alone and wonder how
Men ever dream of ports beyond the bars
Of Finitude that fix the Here and Now.
A meteor falls, and foam beneath me breaks;
Dim phosphor fires within it faintly die.
So soft the sea is that it seems a sky
On which eternity to life awakes.
The universe is spread before my face,
Worlds where perchance a million seas like this
Are flowing and where tides of pain and bliss
Find, as on earth, so prevalent a place
That nothing of their wont we there should miss.
The Universe, that man has dared to say
Is but one Being—ah, courageous thought!
Which is so vast that hope itself is fraught
With shame, while saying it, and shrinks away.
Shrinks, even as now! For clouds sweep up the skies
And darken the wide waters circling round,
From out whose deep arises the old sound
Of Terror unto which no tongue replies
But Faith—that nothing ever shall confound.
Not only pagan Perseus but the Cross
Is shrouded—with wild wind and wilder rain,
That on me beat until my soul again
Sings unsurrendering to fears of Loss.
For this I know,—yea, tho all else lie hid
Uncharted on the waters of our fate,
All lands of Whence or Whither, whose estate
In vain imagination seeks to thrid,
Yet cannot, for the fog within Death’s gate,—
This thing I know, that life, whatever its Source
Or Destiny, comes with an upward urge,
And that we cannot thwart its mighty surge,
But with a joy in strife must keep the course.