Page:Poems by Frances Fuller Victor.djvu/25

 A PAGAN REVERIE.

Tell me, Mother Nature! tender yet stern mother!

In what nomenclature (fittlier than another)

Can I laud and praise thee, entreat and implore thee;

Ask thee what thy ways be, question yet adore thee?

Over me thy heaven bends its royal arches;

Through its vault the seven planets keep their marches;

Rising, shining, setting, with no change or turning;

Never once forgetting—wasted not with burning.

On and on, unceasing, move the constellations,

Lessening nor increasing since the birth of nations;

Sun and moon unfailing keep their times and seasons,—

But man, unavailing, pleads to thee for reasons

Why the great dumb mountains, why the ocean hoary,

Even the babling fountains, older are than story,

And his life's duration s but a few short marches

Of the constellations through the heavenly arches!

Even the oaks of Mamre, and the palms of Kedar,

(Praising thee with psalmistry), and the stately cedar,

Through the cycling ages, stinted not are growing,

While the holiest sages have not time for knowing.

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