CHARTINGS

There is no moon, only the sea and stars;

There is no land, only the vessel's bow

On which I stand alone and wonder how

Men ever dream of ports beyond the bars

Of Finitude that fix the Here and Now.

A meteor falls, and foam beneath me breaks;

Dim phosphor fires within it faintly die.

So soft the sea is that it seems a sky

On which eternity to life awakes.

The universe is spread before my face,

Worlds where perchance a million seas like this

Are flowing and where tides of pain and bliss

Find, as on earth, so prevalent a place

That nothing of their wont we there should miss.

The Universe, that man has dared to say

Is but one Being — ah, courageous thought!

Which is so vast that hope itself is fraught

With shame, while saying it, and shrinks away.

Shrinks, even as now! For clouds sweep up the skies

And darken the wide waters circling round,

From out whose deep arises the old sound

Of Terror unto which no tongue replies

But Faith — that nothing ever shall confound.

Not only pagan Perseus but the Cross

Is shrouded — with wild wind and wilder rain,

That on me beat until my soul again

Sings unsurrendering to fears of Loss.

For this I know,— yea, tho all else lie hid

Uncharted on the waters of our fate,

All lands of Whence or Whither, whose estate

In vain imagination seeks to thrid,

Yet cannot, for the fog within Death's gate,—

This thing I know, that life, whatever its Source

Or Destiny, comes with an upward urge,

And that we cannot thwart its mighty surge,

But with a joy in strife must keep the course.