Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FAITH, by PHILIP JAMES BAILEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FAITH, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Faith is a higher faculty than reason
Last Line: It has a plan, no plot; and life has none.
Subject(s): Faith; Belief; Creed


FAITH is a higher faculty than reason,
Though of the brightest power of revelation,
As the snow-peaked mountain rises o'er
The lightning, and applies itself to heaven,
We know in daytime there are stars about us
Just as at night, and name them what and where
By sight of science; so by faith we know,
Although we may not see them till our night,
That spirit's eye all heaven may be
As full of angels as a beam of light
Of motes. As spiritual, it shows all
Classes of life, perhaps above our kind,
Known to tradition, reason, or God's word.
As earthly, it imbodies most the life
Of youth; its powers, its aims, its deeds, its failings;
And as a sketch of world-life, it begins
And ends, and rightly, in heaven, and with God;
While heaven is also in the midst thereof.
God, or all good, the evil of the world,
And man, wherein are both, are each display'd;
The mortal is the model of all men.
The foibles, follies, trials, sufferings
Of a young, hot, un-world-school'd heart, that has
Had its own way in life, and wherein all
May see some likeness of their own, 'tis these
Attract, unite, and, sunlike, concentrate
The ever-moving system of our feeling;
Like life, too, as a whole, it has a moral,
And, as in life, each scene too has its moral,
A scene for every year of his young life,
Shining upon it, like the quiet moon,
Illustrating the obscure, unequal earth:
And though these scenes may seem to careless eyes
Irregular and rough and unconnected,
Like to the stones at Stonehenge, still a use,
A meaning, and a purpose may be mark'd
Among them of a temple rear'd to God, --
It has a plan, no plot; and life has none.





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