Classic Poem

C HANCE

What is Chance? Circumstance,
Shut for a moment from God's glance?
Hear what happened to-day,
Then say!

On a pleasure beach a woman stood
And gazed, as, reach upon reach,
I rose in a whirring plane
Till far through the ether's girth
The glad sea and the green earth
Seemed joys a bird had dreamed.

She gazed, till down again
In the pilot's hands
I circled safe to the sands,
And then in rapture cried,
" I too, I too will ride!"
And mounted the wings, trembling,
Yet trustful as a bride.

And a bride she was — of Death.
For the iron heart of the plane,
Barred, by Chance, of breath,
Missed a beat, and then,
There in the aisles of space,
Cruelly sank, like a stone,
Burying flesh and bone
Under it, mutely mangled.

What, I say, is Chance?
Anarch Circumstance,
Unmastered by God's glance?