The Ever-Present

Pale Doubter, think not heaven is quenched 
Because the clouds thy path have drenched, 
Nor that a vanished joy, perforce, 
Reveals a Godless universe:
‘Tis only death that changes not:
Worlds flush and fade with pulses hot.

Splendors that in the sunset burn.
And, slowly dying, oft return,
As if from some immortal well
Were poured the living miracle,—
Tell more of being's throbbing Heart 
Than changeless glory could impart.

The steady march of night and day, 
Seasons and cycles, and the play 
Of the great astral beam that rocks 
To roll the rounding equinox,—
Heaven's "walking beam," — a Life declare 
Forever present everywhere.

I love the sunshine and its flowers, 
With equal gladness greet the showers;
The day is glorlous to my sight, 
Nor less the glory of the night;
Sweet, sensuous thrills by summer wrought
Our winters crystallize to thought.

Faith, love, our common hopes and joys;
Eird-songs, and planets' equipoise;
Returning tides, and boundless laws 
That bind discrete effects to cause:
Great thoughts that grasp eternal themes;
High aspirations, glorious dreams;

Deep yearnings to an unknown sphere 
As stars lean toward a dark composer;
The eternal tides of more and more, 
That break upon life's visible shore, 
With murmurs from an infinite deep, 
Too vast fer human eye to sweep;

These walfs flung landward from the abyss 
To hint of other words than this,—
All, even the humblest, are replete, 
With tokens of the Paraclete, 
And slowy with their voiceless call 
Draw all things toward the Life of all.

The good we know, that deep and still 
Rose blooming out of seeming ill, 
Points up to heights we cannot see, 
The golden Paradise to be;
Where life and knowledge strike deep root, 
And lure to unforbidden fruit.

If many a million years ago
When earth was all one fiery glow, 
Or many a thousand when the blocks 
Of crawling glaciers ploughed the rocks, 
Some soul had sobbed, "O Godless fate!" 
The patient heavens had whispered, "Wait."