Ideals
O science, whose footsteps wander,
Audacious and unafraid,
Where the mysteries that men ponder
Lie folded in awful shade,
Though you bring us, with calm defiance,
Dear gifts from the bournes you wing,
There is yet, O undaunted Science,
One gift that you do not bring!
Shall you conquer the last restriction
That conceals it from you now,
And come back with its benediction
Like an aureole on your brow?
Shall you fly to us, roamer daring,
Past barriers of time and space,
And return from your mission bearing
The light of God on your face?
We know not, but still can treasure,
In the yearning of our suspense,
Consolation we may not measure
By the certitudes of sense;
For life, as we long and question,
Seems to bear, while it hurries by,
Through undertones of suggestion,
Immortality's deep reply!
To ears that await its token
Perpetually it strays
Indeterminate, fitful, broken
By the discords of our days!
It pierces the grim disasters
Of clamorous human hate,
And its influence overmasters
All the ironies of fate!
The icy laugh of the scorner
Cannot strike its echoes mute;
It cleaves the moan of the mourner
Like a clear æolian lute.
At its tone less keen and savage
Grows the anguish of farewell tears,
And its melody haunts the ravage
Of the desecrating years!
Philosophy builds, and spares not
Her firm laborious power;
But her lordly edifice wears not
Its last aerial tower,
For the quarries of reason fail her
Ere the structure's perfect scope,
And the stone that would now avail her
Must be hewn from heights of hope!
But Art, at her noblest glory,
Can seem, to her lovers fond,
As divinely admonitory
Of infinitudes beyond.
She can beam upon earth's abasement
Like splendor flung down sublime
Through a vague yet exalted casement
From eternity into time!
On the canvas of some great painter
We may trace, in its varied flame,
Now leaping aloft, now fainter,
As the mood uplifts the aim,
That impulse by whose rare presence
His venturing brush has drawn
Its hues from the efflorescence
Of a far Elysian dawn!
An impassioned watcher gazes
Where the faultless curves combine
That sculpture's mightier phases
Imperially enshrine,
And feels that by strange election
The artificer's genius wrought
From the marble a pale perfection
That is paramount over thought!
So in music entranced we wonder,
If its charm the spirit seeks,
When with mellow voluminous thunder
A sovereign maestro speaks,
Till it seems that by ghostly aidance
Upraised above lesser throngs,
He has caught from the stars their cadence
And woven the winds into songs!
More than all, if the stately brilliance
Of a poet's rapture rise,
Like a fountain whose full resilience
Is lovely against clear skies,
We are thrilled with a dream unbounded
Of deeps by no vision scanned,
That conjecture has never sounded
And conception has never spanned!
So the harvest that knowledge misses
Intuition seems to reap;
One pauses before the abysses
That one will delight to leap.
One balks the ruminant sages,
And one bids the world aspire,
While the slow processional ages
Irreversibly retire!
Audacious and unafraid,
Where the mysteries that men ponder
Lie folded in awful shade,
Though you bring us, with calm defiance,
Dear gifts from the bournes you wing,
There is yet, O undaunted Science,
One gift that you do not bring!
Shall you conquer the last restriction
That conceals it from you now,
And come back with its benediction
Like an aureole on your brow?
Shall you fly to us, roamer daring,
Past barriers of time and space,
And return from your mission bearing
The light of God on your face?
We know not, but still can treasure,
In the yearning of our suspense,
Consolation we may not measure
By the certitudes of sense;
For life, as we long and question,
Seems to bear, while it hurries by,
Through undertones of suggestion,
Immortality's deep reply!
To ears that await its token
Perpetually it strays
Indeterminate, fitful, broken
By the discords of our days!
It pierces the grim disasters
Of clamorous human hate,
And its influence overmasters
All the ironies of fate!
The icy laugh of the scorner
Cannot strike its echoes mute;
It cleaves the moan of the mourner
Like a clear æolian lute.
At its tone less keen and savage
Grows the anguish of farewell tears,
And its melody haunts the ravage
Of the desecrating years!
Philosophy builds, and spares not
Her firm laborious power;
But her lordly edifice wears not
Its last aerial tower,
For the quarries of reason fail her
Ere the structure's perfect scope,
And the stone that would now avail her
Must be hewn from heights of hope!
But Art, at her noblest glory,
Can seem, to her lovers fond,
As divinely admonitory
Of infinitudes beyond.
She can beam upon earth's abasement
Like splendor flung down sublime
Through a vague yet exalted casement
From eternity into time!
On the canvas of some great painter
We may trace, in its varied flame,
Now leaping aloft, now fainter,
As the mood uplifts the aim,
That impulse by whose rare presence
His venturing brush has drawn
Its hues from the efflorescence
Of a far Elysian dawn!
An impassioned watcher gazes
Where the faultless curves combine
That sculpture's mightier phases
Imperially enshrine,
And feels that by strange election
The artificer's genius wrought
From the marble a pale perfection
That is paramount over thought!
So in music entranced we wonder,
If its charm the spirit seeks,
When with mellow voluminous thunder
A sovereign maestro speaks,
Till it seems that by ghostly aidance
Upraised above lesser throngs,
He has caught from the stars their cadence
And woven the winds into songs!
More than all, if the stately brilliance
Of a poet's rapture rise,
Like a fountain whose full resilience
Is lovely against clear skies,
We are thrilled with a dream unbounded
Of deeps by no vision scanned,
That conjecture has never sounded
And conception has never spanned!
So the harvest that knowledge misses
Intuition seems to reap;
One pauses before the abysses
That one will delight to leap.
One balks the ruminant sages,
And one bids the world aspire,
While the slow processional ages
Irreversibly retire!
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