| |
| SEEK not what I am to know, | |
| What my name is, never crave, | |
| God records it, Earth and Woe, | |
| It may radiate the grave, | |
| If at last my tears’ long flow | 5 |
| Should melt the stones to hear. | |
| |
| Wandering ever—I, forlorn, | |
| Refuge seek for this poor frame. | |
| Thinking, suffering;—Man, base-born, | |
| Spurns my right, ignores my claim— | 10 |
| I pass his tortures, scorn | |
| His piety and his jeers. | |
| |
| Wandering ever—storms and ire | |
| Burst with fury on my brow, | |
| Adam’s curse I bore entire, | 15 |
| Wretched, yet too proud to bow; | |
| Victim ever, on the pyre | |
| I laved in grief each sin. | |
| |
| Midst the whirlwind raging round, | |
| Vanished lands, seas disappeared, | 20 |
| Crumbled all, mere dust I found, | |
| Empires, temples, shrines revered; | |
| But immortal lived Thought bound | |
| My heart’s sad depths within. | |
| |
| From life’s dawn that thought upgrew, | 25 |
| Ever present to my mind, | |
| Vast, sublime, it shone and grew, | |
| All to it,—a setless sun. | |
| Glory o’er the Past it threw | |
| And o’er the Future—Light. | 30 |
| |
| Longing for the Infinite | |
| Moved me ever, spurs me now, | |
| But the end has not dawned yet, | |
| Hope unripe hangs on the bough, | |
| Ages do I wait and fret | 35 |
| For that which comes not nigh. | |
| |
| Years to me are moments brief, | |
| Small the Universe appears, | |
| Deep in thought, immersed in grief, | |
| Weighing tyrants with men’s fears, | 40 |
| Sweep I Hope’s harp for relief | |
| And raise wild terror’s cry. | |
| |
| Every suffering has been mine— | |
| Outrage, insult, struggle, pain, | |
| Strong in sovereign thought divine, | 45 |
| All I challenge, all disdain. | |
| Foes will fail—not my faith’s shrine, | |
| No time has that uptorn. | |
| |
| Seek not what I am to know, | |
| What my name is rests in gloom, | 50 |
| God records it, Earth and Woe, | |
| But ’tis hidden from the Tomb; | |
| Torture me, contempt I show | |
| For pity as for scorn. | |
| |
