With thunder overthrown Day dies in solitude; The guide, a monster grown, Devours him in the wood.
Idle and base the cry ‘If it be so, so be it; But if it be so, then I Will look not lest I see it.’
Or this, ‘If it be so We lose this thing or that; ’Twere better not to know.’ The lightning spareth not
The timorous soul who hides His head in danger thus: The iron fact abides; Things were not made for us.
Who answers, who repines? Not he who works in love, But he who thinks divines The thing he cannot prove.
He takes his stand and rolls The phrase he hopes for Heav’n, But cheats the hungry souls And gives them bread of leav’n.
His ears are filled with wax, His bandaged eyeballs blind, And yet no doubts perplex, And he can see the wind.
Though all in science good, By incessant question found, Beyond it strayed we brood And argue round and round;
And where we hoped the end, Such distance we have come, Amazed we only find The point we started from;
And fancies, like the breath We utter, do but prove A cloud above, beneath, To fog us as we move.
We climb from cloud to cloud The airy precipice; Fain would we reach to God; We fall thro’ the abyss.
The vapours will not bear. Wild-clutching we are hurl’d Thro’ measurements of air Again upon the world.
Clear rings the answer high, ‘The mystery makes itself; The mystery is a lie; Be cleansed and know thyself.’
If with unshaken will, Resolving not to stray But to be rising still, We clamber day by day
From truth to truth, at last, In valleys of the night Not lost, we know the vast And simple upper light,
Only one labouring knows. The base, tumultuous wreck Of rock and forest shows; The summit, a single peak.
So sought, so seen, so found. And what the end so high? A summit splendour crown’d Between the earth and sky,
Where with sidereal blaze The mistless planets glow, And stars unsully’d gaze On unpolluted snow.
No strife the vast reveals But perfect peace indeed— The thunder of spinning wheels At rest in eternal speed.
Loll’d in the lap of home; Full-fed with fruits of time Ripen’d on labour’d loam By others, since the prime;
Ingrate, we give no thought To all these golden things The toiling past hath brought, The toiling present brings.
But on this silent shore And waste barbarian, We hear the engines roar And mind the might of man.