Science (Whitman)

While the dull fates sit nodding at their loom, Benumbed and drowsy with its ceaseless boom, I hear, as in a dream, the monody Of life's tumultuous, ever-ebbing sea; The iron tramp of armies hurrying by Forever and forever but to die; The tragedies of time, the dreary years, The frantic carnival of hopes and fears, The wild waltz-music wailing through the gloom, The slow death-agonies, the yawning tomb, The loved ones lost forever to our sight, In the wild waste of chaos and old night; Earth's long, long dream of martyrdom and pain; No God in heaven to rend the welded chain Of endless evolution! Is this all? And mole-eyed "Science," gloating over bones, The skulls of monkeys and the Age of Stones, Blinks at the golden lamps that light the hall Of dusty death, and answers: "It is all."