C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Minot Judson Savage (1841–1918)
Mystery
O
Wrapped close for ever round the throne of God?
Why is our pathway still in mystery trod?
None answers, though we call aloud.
While still beneath the ground,
Think you it ever knows
The mystery profound
Of its own power of birth and bloom,
Until it springs above its tomb?
Its mean life in the dust,
Or hangs upon the walls
A dead aurelian crust:
Think you the larva ever knew
Its gold-winged flight before it flew?
Columbus sailed away,
And down the sinking main
Moved toward the setting day,
Could any words have made him see
The new worlds that were yet to be?
Fills out his little plan,
Still lisping day by day
Of how he’ll be a man;
But can you to his childish brain
Make aught of coming manhood plain?
Let God be e’er so nigh,
Yet howso’er he love us,
And howe’er much we cry,
There is no speech that can make clear
The thing “that doth not yet appear.”
The things beyond us we can never know,
Until up to their lofty height we grow,
And finite grasps infinity.