William Wilfred Campbell (1861–1918)

SUBLIMITY! Sublimity! I lay thee down;

Great Volume of the ages! older far

Than Cheops’ Pyramid or the Parthenon;

And yet as new as yester-even’s star,

That came and burned so bright and pure, across

The world’s great weariness and day’s decline.

What are all earth’s ambitions, gain and loss,

Her hopes ephemeral; when thou art mine?

Thou stand’st, a crystal well of water pure,

Amid those fevered fonts of heathen wine,

Graven in truth’s deep rock that shall endure,

So greatly human, yet so all divine!

This age doth press upon me like a vast,

Grim adamantine wall of evil doom;

But when I drink thy living draught, I cast

Aside this vesture of material gloom;

These curtains of mortality fall apart;

And out, and up, beyond, eternally,

Those stairways of God’s ages; and man’s part

In all that greatness, gone, and yet to be!