Classic Poem

Wrapped in white shawls with blue fringes
They sway their heads and hands — and pray:
This is the judgment Day
On which Existence hinges.

" On New Year's Day it is written,
On Atonement Day it is sealed:
In the battle of life who be smitten,
And who shall conquer the field.

" Who the mount of life shall climb,
And who descend;
Who shall drop before his time,
Or reach the end.

" Who shall grow,
And who — decay;
Who must go,
And who may stay.

" As beneath a shepherd's rod
Sheep are counted on their way,
So doest Thou, Almighty God,
Count us one by one this day.

" Man's start and end is soil,
A shard of broken pot;
The crumb he eats is toil,
And he — a dream forgot — "
Wrapped in white shawls they pray:
This is the Judgment Day.

To and fro as they move
They look like trees in a grove
Waved by the autumn breeze;
Gone are the summer-days warm,
The forests are sensing the storm —
And what are men but trees?

But silent among them I stand;
Their prayers I well understand,
Yet cannot pray with them:
Oh God, if I too am a tree,
Ah me!
I am of different root and stem.

The tempest Jehovah may send
Can break me, not bend.

I shall ask from heaven no gift,
Like an oak my head I will lift,
My sky-piercing eyes I will raise,
Nor flatter, nor beg, nor praise,
But claim:
Why have you hidden in flame,
And drawn the sword from your sheath
On me, unweaponed, beneath!

Come down to me from your throne of fire
With me to plod, like me to tire;
Like me the rugged road to trudge —
And then — judge!

Whoever you be, no matter;
I cannot praise nor flatter;
I say to you as man to man:
And if confess I must —
I do not like your sordid plan
Of making life a muddy span
Between eternities of dust.

Wrapped in white shawls they pray:
This is the Judgment Day.

But I alone
With heart — a stone
Look on, look on —
And cannot pray.