WHITHER NOW

But man's deliverances intervene

Between the soul's swift speech and God's high will;

That saith to tempests of the thought, “Be still!”

And in life's lazaretto maketh clean

The leprous sense. Ah, who can find his way

Among the many altars? Who can call

Out perfect peace from any ritual,

Or shelter find in systems of a day?

As one sees on some ancient urn, upthrown

From out a tomb, records that none may read

With like interpretation, and the stone

Retains its graven fealty to the dead:

So, on the great palimpsest men have writ

Such lines o'ercrossed that none interprets it.