Poems By John L. Stoddard Part 16

LIFE'S TRILOGY

_Youth_ dreams of all the years shall hold,-- Of poems writ, of battles won, Of statues made, of love, of gold, And honors, added one by one; How sweet the song of Hope, if sung, When life is young!

_Man's_ dreams are stern and few indeed; His youthful aims he finds despised, For in a world of strife and greed Ideals must be sacrificed; Alas, there is so little time In manhood's prime!

_Age_ dreams of what the years have brought,-- The blots upon life's tear-dimmed scroll, The brave attempts that came to naught, The unsolved problems of the soul; How sadly is the tale retold, When life is old!

_Youth, Manhood, Age,_--the fatal Three!

Illusion, Struggle, and Regret!

So hath it been, so shall it be, And to what end? We know not yet; Still sweeps the mighty life-flood on, Now here, now gone!

Seed, bud, florescence, and decay In nature, races, nations, men;-- Nay, Earth itself shall fail one day To feed its freezing brood! What then?

Successive cycles, vast and small,-- Can these be all?

Do all these swirls of suns and souls, Of spirit keen and senseless stone, Speed on to no appointed goals, Like sand along the desert blown,-- Forever born from out the void, To be destroyed?--

Nay, Reason, shocked at anarchy, Demands an author and an aim, Seeks ever for the master-key To solve the mystery,--Whence came This starlit sea of Evermore, Without a sh.o.r.e?

And whence comes Life,--that occult Force, So rich in its prolific range, So frail and swift to run its course, Yet deathless in protean change?

Must we not hope that Death will clear The darkness here?

Such hopes appear of little worth When, peering through our planet's bars, We picture this, our tiny Earth, Amid that wilderness of stars!

Yet in those sun-strewn depths of s.p.a.ce It hath its place.

Its rhythmic motion, tuned to time, Its awful rush, yet sure return, Make even our dim orb sublime, And we at last the truth discern,-- With G.o.d is neither small nor great, Nor soon, nor late.

Unconscious actors,--it may be That here we painfully rehea.r.s.e, In parts, whose plots we do not see, Some drama of the universe,-- Advanced, as n.o.bler grow our souls, To loftier roles.

MYSTERIES

Bound to the earth in its headlong flight, Whence and whither we do not know, Cleaving the awful void of night With frost above and fire below, What is the goal toward which we fly?

What does it mean to live and die?

Under our feet a trembling sh.e.l.l, Pierced by a hundred lurid rents!

Lower still a molten h.e.l.l, Seen through its lava-belching vents!

And men, within its blighting breath, Are charred, like leaves, to a shrivelled death.

Thin is the rind on which we tread; It shakes, and a thousand lives are lost; The sea engulfs unnumbered dead; Each second scores of souls are tossed Into the stream that sweeps them on ...

Whither? Who knows where they are gone?

Over the earth-crust millions crawl, Fight for a little gold and grain, Then in a few years leave it all, Nevermore to be seen again!

When will the tragic tale be told?

And what of Man when the earth grows cold?

Poised on the planet's rim we stand, Peering aghast into boundless s.p.a.ce; Infinite depths on every hand, Never again in the self-same place; Dragged by the sun itself away On toward a point in the Milky Way.

Not without companions we; Here and there gleam other fires,-- Burning ships on a sh.o.r.eless sea; Now and again a flame expires, One last, quivering shaft of light, Shot through a billion leagues of night.

There in its last volcanic throes A dying world perhaps dissolves; Further still, where the sun-mist glows, A mighty, new-born sun evolves; Ceaseless change in an endless sky!

What does it mean to live and die?

STAR DRIFT

The glaring sun hath ceased to shine; The solemn stars invade the sky; Again the welcome night is mine, Wherein to view the worlds on high; The night! when heaven bares its face, And man with reverent soul can trace The awful mysteries of s.p.a.ce.

Too long the shadeless solar blaze Hath forced my vision toward the sod; 'Tis night alone that helps us raise Our thoughts from littleness to G.o.d, And by its darkness sets us free To gaze across what seems to be The portal of Eternity.

I watch the stellar hosts ascend Their devious paths in slow array, And note the place where millions blend To form the fabled Milky Way,--- That zone of radiant suns, whose light Hath needed centuries of flight To reach our little earth to-night,

Through lenses scanned, its golden haze Resolves itself to points that glow In one stupendous, brilliant maze Of countless...o...b.., that come and go On pathways we may never learn, However long their light may burn, However ardently we yearn.

Apparently so densely strewn, But oh! what gulfs those suns divide!

As each pursues its course alone Beyond an interval as wide As that which yawns between our own And any of those star-seeds sown In astral gardens, still unknown.

Sometimes from that resplendent sheen A new light gleams across the void, And, awe-struck, we conceive the scene Of two vast solar orbs destroyed; By fearful impact changed again, Unnumbered miles beyond our ken, To leagues of blazing hydrogen.

Before such marvels, what are we To plume ourselves in foolish pride?

Within that dim immensity How many suns and earths have died!

The tiny mote on which we stand, However fair and finely planned, Is nothing but a grain of sand.

To-day, as through the ages gone, By law impelled, by law restrained, Suns, planets, systems,--all sweep on Toward bourns still dark and unexplained; Some bright with youth, some dull with age, Their varied colors well presage Their distance from the final stage.

For all are doomed at last to die!

On heaven's blue sea each isle of fire, Of all that now enchant the eye, Must finally in gloom expire; Though all may still roll on, unseen, As blackened cinders, while between Dark, lifeless planets intervene.

And then? The mind sinks back in dread!

Such burnt-out worlds may well appal, If they must still continue dead, And universal night end all; But, one by one, as speed shall fail, Each may some rival ma.s.s a.s.sail, Till nebulas again prevail.

But not for long! A refluent spurge Shall that destructive course reverse, And cause those sun-mists to converge To mould another universe; Again shall constellations rise, And suns and planets light the skies, And man regain his paradise.

For thus with rhythmic sweep sublime Swings Chaos on to Cosmos; then In ages, measureless by time, Rolls Cosmos back to mist again, In one stupendous ebb and flow, As aeons come and aeons go, With all their freight of weal and woe.

Hard, cruel, hopeless? It may be.

We know too little to decide; Yet hope that o'er that starlit sea Some steadfast, G.o.d-directed tide Will one day bear us to a sh.o.r.e, Where we shall find our lost once more, And what was here unknown, adore.

TYROLEAN

OBERMAIS