Page:The Soul of a Century.djvu/120

 What is mere man and all the Earth to HIM? What all our petty grievances and pains? What is the starry realm, the oceans’ depths? What all the thoughts within whose dizzy whirl Man’s reason quivers like a dying spark? All this he sees through with a keen clear eye, All mysteries, all secrets are to him, An open book, outspread before his gaze. And when He turns the pages of this book Then thunder’s mighty voice rolls o’er the sky, And when a lightning crashes through the trees, Into the rocky covers of a book He chisels letters of an eternal script. World’s hungry haste is poison to his soul And only rarely he keeps company With mortal men More often when disturbed By nearing footsteps, all his musing stops, And to the cloudy heights he flies on colored wings. Only at times he breaks a poet’s dream To scatter rainbow-colored beauty there Or takes the sparkle of the eye divine That slumbers in some bosom young and fair, And kindles it into a mighty flame. O blessed is he, who trusted to HIS hand His fantasie’s unbridled eagle flight. He guides it ever to abysmal heights And with a key of feelings that are true He opes the land of eternal ideals. Again at other times he reaches to the depths Where the fresh current of humanity Scatters its waves in a crystalline flight. Or else he pauses in oblivion, And with the torch of timeless changeless truth He casts true light upon the aims of man Or else seeks paths to aid man in his quest. And the bitter cup of cold ingratitude, That a poet often to the bottom drains He wreathes with garlands of unfading blooms, And sweetens with a nectar of world’s fame. Thus I beheld him in the darkened woods And in the lightning over a whispering stream He showed me his sublimely molded face.

O Master Spirit that with the breath of winds And with the scent of flowers speaks to me,