Classic Poem

Warm in this marble, that is stone no more,
Life at wound-pause lifts ear to woundless mind;
Backward the ages their slow clew unwind,
And step by step, and star by star, lead o'er
The trail again, where eyeless passion tore
Its red way to a soul. Mist-bound and blind
No more, the thinker waits, and God grown kind
Flashes a foot-print where He goes before.

Not to be followed! Falls the cloud again;
Folds the stern form around the striving doubt,
And curve betrays to curve the silent birth
That shall be voice to later times and men;
While lone in unlit dark, within, without,
He sits immortal on a godless earth.