Life and Existence

So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be.

 

The great world’s altar-stairs, That slope through darkness up to God.

 

So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life.

 

But what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.

 

Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side?

 

Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side?

 

And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

 

And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

 

How fares it with the happy dead?

 

And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land.

 

I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing.

 

Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before.

 

Our little systems have their day.

 

Believing where we cannot prove.

 

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

 

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

 

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

 

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

 

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

 

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapp’d in universal law.

 

This is the truth the poet sings, That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

 

The deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

 

The deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.