When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud At what has happened. Birds, at least must know It is the change to darkness in the sky. Murmuring something quiet in her breast, One bird begins to close a faded eye; Or overtaken too far from his nest, Hurrying low above the grove, some waif Swoops just in time to his remembered tree. At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe! Now let the night be dark for all of me. Let the night bee too dark for me to see Into the future. Let what will be, be.' The things but balls all going round in rings. Some mighty huge, some mighty tiny, All of them radiant and mighty shiny. They mean to tell us all was rolling blind Till accidentally it hit on mind In an albino monkey in the jungle, And even then it had to grope and bungle, Till Darwin came to earth upon a year To show the evolution how to steer. They mean to tell us, though, the Omnibus Had no real purpose until it got to us. Never believe it. At the very worst It must have had the purpose from the first To produce purpose as the fitter bred: We were just purpose coming to a head. Whose purpose was it, His or Hers or Its? Let's leave that to the scientific wits. Grant me intention, purpose and design -- That's near enough for me to the divine. And yet with all this help of head and brain, How happily instinctive we remain. Our best guide upward farther to the light: Passionate preference such as love at sight. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CHAMBER MUSIC: 22 by JAMES JOYCE NOCTURNE OF REMEMBERED SPRING by CONRAD AIKEN MOUNTAIN FARM by MALCOLM COWLEY TO BEACHEY, 1912 by CARL SANDBURG A MINUET OF MOZART'S by SARA TEASDALE TO BE CLOSELY WRITTEN ON A SMALL PIECE OF PAPER by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS |