OUR hopes, our fears, Our love and hate, Our joys and tears, Our throws with fate, What are they all but phantoms fleeting past, Weak creatures of a day, which but a day may last? But the great Scheme Fares on its course Thro' Time's long dream Of changing force. It saw the plesiosaur and mastodon Wax strong, and dwindle down, and still goes silent on. It saw the ape Rule every land, The cave-man shape Flints for his hand. It saw a thousand generations pass Across life's mournful stage, like visions in a glass. It saw the strange Forgotten Kings, Ages of change, Terrible things, It saw the Egyptian and the Assyrian come, The gay Hellenic bloom, the rugged sway of Rome. These too it saw Totter and fall, A purer law O'er-ruling all, And then the arrested march, the long delay, The baffled hope, the Dawn fading to common day. It makes no cry, It lifts no voice, Tho' all things die, Tho' all rejoice, It goes unceasing onward, blind and dumb, Nor halts, nor hastes, nor heeds whatever things may come. Eternal Scheme, Great Lord of all, August, Supreme, Prostrate we fall, We cannot know Thy working, nor its end, Nor by what hidden paths Thy Perfect Will may tend. But if one word Might come, or sign, Our souls were stirred To growths divine, No longer should we walk in fear and doubt, Like children in dark ways, before the stars come out. Ah no! the word The soul can hear Is only heard By the inner ear, No outward light it is which can illume The spiritual eye, and pierce the enshrouding gloom. An inborn light, An inner voice, Which burneth bright, Which doth rejoice, A Faith in things unseen, an inward sight Which thro' a wrecked world sees the victory of Right. With this our guide, Our strength, our stay, No more aside Our footsteps stray. Fulfil Thyself, Great Scheme, Eternal Plan, Work out -- we ask no word -- the Destiny of Man. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MY FATHER'S FACE by HAYDEN CARRUTH PARAGRAPHS: 15 by HAYDEN CARRUTH SMALL COUNTRIES by JAMES GALVIN THOUGHTS OF A TINY PIG by DAVID IGNATOW THE SONG OF THE SHEPHERDS by EDWIN MARKHAM JUNIUS BRUTUS BOOTH by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |