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Man:
YOU knew then—starting, let us say, with ether— | |
| You would become electrons? out of whirling | |
| Would rise to atoms? then as an atom resting, | |
| Till through Yourself in other atoms moving, | |
| And by the fine affinity of power, | 5 |
| Atom with atom massed, You would go on, | |
| Over the crest of visible forms transformed, | |
| Would be a molecule, a little system | |
| Wherein the atoms move like suns and planets | |
| With satellites, electrons? So, as worlds build | 10 |
| From star-dust, as electron to electron, | |
| The same attraction drawing, molecules | |
| Would wed and pass over the crest again | |
| Of visible forms, lying content as crystals, | |
| Or colloids: ready now to use the gleam | 15 |
| Of life? As it were, I see You with a match, | |
| As one in darkness lights a candle, and one | |
| Sees not his friend’s form in the shadowed room | |
| Until the candle’s lighted—even his form | |
| Is darkened by the new-made light, he stands | 20 |
| So near it! Well, I add to all I’ve asked | |
| Whether You knew the cell born through the glint | |
| Of that same lighted match could never rest— | |
| Even as electrons rest not—but would surge | |
| Over the crest of visible forms, become, | 25 |
| Beneath our feet, life hidden from the eye, | |
| However aided—as above our heads, | |
| Over the Milky Way, great systems whirl | |
| Beyond the telescope!—become bacilli, | |
| Amœba, star-fish, swimming things; on land | 30 |
| The serpent, and then birds, and beasts of prey, | |
| The tiger (You in the tiger), on and on, | |
| Surging above the crest of visible forms | |
| Until the ape came?—oh, what ages they are— | |
| But still creation flies on wings of light!— | 35 |
| Then to the man who roamed the frozen fields, | |
| Neither man nor ape?—we found his jaw, You know, | |
| At Heidelberg, in a sand-pit. On and on | |
| Till Babylon was builded, and arose | |
| Jerusalem and Memphis, Athens, Rome, | 40 |
| Venice and Florence, Paris, London, Berlin, | |
| New York, Chicago—did You know, I ask, | |
| All this would come of You in ether moving? | |
| |
A Voice:
I knew. | |
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Man:
You knew that man was born to be destroyed; | 45 |
| That as an atom perfect, whole, at ease, | |
| Drawn to some other atom, is broken, changed, | |
| And rises over the crest of visible things | |
| To something else—that man must pass as well | |
| Through equal transformation. And You knew | 50 |
| The unutterable things of man’s life: from the first | |
| You saw his racked Deucalion soul, that looks | |
| Backward on life that rises where he rose— | |
| Out of the stones. You saw him looking forward | |
| Over the purple mists that hide the gulf. | 55 |
| Ere the green cell rose, even in the green cell, | |
| You saw the sequences of thought: You saw | |
| That one would say, “All’s matter,” and another, | |
| “All’s mind;” and man’s mind, which reflects the image, | |
| Could not envision it; that even worship | 60 |
| Of what You are would be confused by cries | |
| From India or Palestine; that love | |
| Which sees itself beginning in the seeds, | |
| That fly to seek and wed each other, maims | |
| The soul at the last in loss of child or friend, | 65 |
| Father or mother. And You knew that sex, | |
| Ranging from plants through beasts and up to us, | |
| Had ties of filth—and out of them would rise | |
| Diverse philosophies to tear the world. | |
| You knew, when the green cell arose, that even | 70 |
| The You which formed it, moving on, would bring | |
| Races and breeds, madmen, tyrants, slaves, | |
| The idiot child, the murderer, the insane— | |
| All springing from the action of one law. | |
| You knew the enmity that lies between | 75 |
| The lives of micro-beings and our own. You knew | |
| How man would rise to vision of himself, | |
| Immortal only in the race’s life; | |
| And past the atom and the first glint of life, | |
| Saw him with soul enraptured, yet o’ershadowed | 80 |
| Amid self-consciousness! | |
| |
A Voice:
I knew. | |
| But this your fault: you see Me as apart, | |
| Over, removed, at enmity with you. | |
| You are in Me, and of Me, even at one | 85 |
| With Me. But there’s your soul—your soul may be | |
| The germinal cell of vaster evolution! | |
| Why try to tell you? If I gave a cell | |
| Voice to inquire, and it should ask you this: | |
| “After me what—a stalk, a flower, life | 90 |
| That swims or crawls?” And if I gave to you | |
| Wisdom to say: “You shall become a reed | |
| By the water’s edge”—how could the cell foresee | |
| What the reed is, bending beneath the wind | |
| When the lake ripples and the skies are blue | 95 |
| As larkspur? Therefore I, who moved in darkness, | |
| Becoming light in suns and light in souls, | |
| And mind with thought—for what is thought but light | |
| Sprung from the clash of ether?—I am with you. | |
| And if beyond this stable state that stands | 100 |
| For your life here (as cells are whole and balanced | |
| Till the inner urge bring union, then a breaking, | |
| And building up to higher life) there is | |
| No memory of this world nor of your thought, | |
| Nor sense of life on this world lived and borne; | 105 |
| Or whether you remember, know yourself | |
| As one who lived here, suffered here, aspired— | |
| What does it matter? You cannot be lost, | |
| As I am lost not. Therefore be at peace. | |
| And from the laws whose orbits cross and run | 110 |
| To seeming tangles, find the law through which | |
| Your soul shall be perfected, till it draw— | |
| As the green cell the sunlight draws, and turns | |
| Its chemical effulgence into life— | |
| My inner splendor. All the rest is mine | 115 |
| In infinite time. For if I should unroll | |
| The parchment of the future, it were vain— | |
| You could not read it. | |
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