Classic Poem

( A Modernity )

Twelve good friends
Passed under her hat,
And devil a one of them
Knew where he was at.

Had they but known,
Then had they known all things, —
The littleness of great things,
The unmeasured immensity of small things.
They had known the Where and the Why ,
The When and the Wherefore ,
And how the Eternal
Conceived the Eternal, and therefore
Beginning began the Beginning;
They had apprehended
The ultimate virtue of sinning;
They had caught the whisper
That Vega vibrates to Arcturus,
Piercing the walls
Of heavy flesh that immure us.

But if they had known,
Then had there been no mystery;
And Life had been poorer,
And laughter unsurer,
And the shadow of death securer,
By lack of this brief history.