The Inscrutable

THE INSCRUTABLE.

BY GEO. S. BURLEIGH.

Unfathomable deeps descend below,

            Drop where we will the sounding-line of thought,

            Far down the heart of things the Sage has wrought;

Far up the mystic Seer has felt the glow

Of other worlds, and the weird interflow

            Of unseen lives with our lives , he has caught,

            And thrilled us with the vision! Yet as naught

To the unmeasured All is all we know!

Heaven is as deep to him who soars aloft

            Tossed by a swollen bubble, as to us

Who gaze securely from our humble croft;

            And that small life — atom diaphanous

Beneath our lens — demands a deeper lore

Than ours to read it till it yields no more.

 

While the least monad in the vital round

            Witholds its secret from the solvent eye

            Of keenest inquisition, and the sky

Sets back forever its illusive bound

From wing or orb invading its profound,

            Who shall presume to measure the Most High?

            And grasp the terms of God’s infinity?

Or with what fathom-line that gulf shall sound!

Where human knowledge at its verge finds well

            The low too lofty, shallowest still too deep,

The straight too broad, and all inscrutable —

            Yielding their law [?] some deeper law to keep —

God’s grandeur, opening, bids us evermore

Boldly to seek and humbly to adore!