Classic Poem

Day , with your sovran splendor, Night, with your gentle beams,
Sunset, with fleeting glories blended of deeds and dreams,
Are ye not Light, at flood or ebb on the skyey shore,
Or shattered on reefs of Cloudland? Yea, we are this and more.
For we are ordained the seasons wherein the sons of earth
Shall toil, shall sink in slumber, shall taste their sop of mirth.
And yet are ye more and greater, for a wizard glass are ye
Wherein man may behold what was, what is, and what yet shall be.
Though the many care not, dare not, to read the weird ye show,
For the weal of man were ye wrought; as for us, we will look and know.

Our fathers' fathers, raptured by Sunset's living bloom,
Appalled by the shadowless Noontide and Night's engulfing gloom,
Looked on this flaming cloud-world, with earth and sea alight,
As the world that is, by Noontide obscured as even by Night.
Our fathers, doughtier heroes than any Gama unfearing
The wild Cape's guardian specter, or any Colombo steering
Forth and away from land sheer down the gulfs of dread,
Our fathers dared to sail where no sea was, men said;
But they proclaimed the sea where Truth, unshrined, unveiled,
Floats within mortal ken; into that sea they sailed,
Into the light of Day, which none before had dared;
And what they found and won we all our lives have shared.
Yea, in the span of a rounded life, behold them wrest
Secrets profounder, more, from Nature's close-locked breast
Than all men had won before them, since ever the cave-man first
Smote the flint, and Fire, forthflaming to serve him, burst.
No wonder our fathers proclaim their eyes have discovered " the Truth; "
We give them our grateful praise; and we own it the simple sooth
When they name it " Naught but the Truth, " their revelation of Day;
But, when they bid us hail it " the Whole Truth, " can we obey?
For, sun estranging from sun, broad-stretching, weird and dread,
Is not the veil of Night with its mystic legend unread?
Dare we affirm that its folds harbor not truths more rare
Than any the sapphire Noon showers through its golden air?

Would we see a picture clearly, we shade our eyes from the light;
Would we look on the throned sun and behold his face aright,
We temper his beams to our weakness; and may it not even so
Be found that the vault of Day, with its all-revealing glow,
Yet veils from our feeble sense, who knows what celestial fires?
Shall we not then gird our loins, and, worthy sons of our sires,
Following not in their steps, but vowed to the selfsame goal,
Widen the bounds of knowledge till they front on the infinite whole?
Let us, like them, be bold to steer where flag ne'er flew,
Ay! though we dash our prow on the Noontide's cliffs of blue.
We are sick of the Sunset's fancies, we are starved with the facts of Day;
Yield us, O Night, the Truth, which alone is our life and stay!

Yea, we will face the Night! Pity nor scorn will we heed;
But, if Darkness utter a voice, or blazon a message to read,
That will we share with men. So let the Sunset flare;
We have watched it how oft aforetime when we deemed that the Truth was there,
Flashed for a moment's comfort to cheer our drooping faith!
Now, let it fade as it flamed; we know 't is but Noontide's wraith.
And, if nothing to hear or to see pierce through the chill and the dank,
Then at least shall we know that the world is on one half blank.
Night we shall know to be naught, her shade from our lives we will cast,
Ceasing with seraphs or specters to people the shuddering vast.

But, brief is our time of doubt; ere the winged afterglow
Is wan of its hovering crimson, before us, above us, lo!
And on either hand, through the deepening gloom, looks down a star,
Not framed in our vault of blue, but throned beyond measure afar.
Tender, majestic, patient, mild — oh! what are we,
For whom ye have waited so long, who have dared not look and see!
Now is the air, as with incense, purple-flooded with light,
The stars burn larger adown it, and fresh on the wondering sight
Other and farther beacons, wherever the eye may turn,
Shatter the dark into splendor, till naught but light we discern,
Till we stand, forgetful of earth, lost in awe and amaze
At the newer heavens unfolding, whereof, amid Noontide's blaze,
We never had guessed a glimmer; and still the depths expand;
With a baldric of silver sheen is the jewelled heaven spanned.
So thickly sown are the lights that our vision fails, and is fain
To deem they no longer shine, but fall in a crystal rain.
The waters that lie at our feet, which had kindled with Sunset's glow,
Quiver with snowy radiance arched in their depths below.
And the tiniest beam, who knows but 't is poured by some Lord of Day
Unto worlds in whose eyes our sun faints to as feeble a ray?
Then we bare our heads to the stars, no conquerors, we, of the Night,
But conquered, humbled, abashed, silent, beneath the might
Of the merciful Truth revealed, we had dared so long to doubt,
We had dared so long to deny, so long to perish without!

O ye who read in faith but the child-man's nursery rhyme,
In hope of immortal life but a waking dream of his prime,
You we summon to gaze on this infinite vast laid bare,
Wherein your Noonday world is adrift as a mote in the air,
The Universe unveiled, which has waited since time began,
Outwatching the weary ages till man should at last be man,
Should turn from the Sunset's riddle, not back to Noonday skies,
But forward, beyond the Sunset, where only its answer lies.

So we return from our voyage, from the Night and its new-found shore;
We have only touched on the strand, not ours to encamp, to explore,
To inhabit, — these are the tasks, unending, of gladness and gain
That await your happier hands, O sons of the years of our pain.
What the Sunset guessed and the Noontide missed ye shall find in the Night —
The Truth behind truth, the Faith behind faith, the Right behind right!