Selections from the American Poets/Incomprehensibility of God
INCOMPREHENSIBILITY OF GOD.
Where art thou Thou! Source and Support of allThat is or seen or felt; Thyself unseen,Unfelt, unknown—alas! unknowable!I look abroad among thy works: the sky,Vast, distant, glorious with its world of suns,Life-giving earth, and ever-moving main,And speaking winds, and ask if these are Thee!The stars that twinkle on, the eternal hills,The restless tide's outgoing and return,The omnipresent and deep-breathing air—Though hailed as gods of old, and only less—Are not the Power I seek; are thine, not Thee!I ask Thee from the past; if in the years,Since first Intelligence could search its source,Or in some former, unremember'd being(If such, perchance, were mine), did they behold Thee?And next interrogate Futurity—So fondly tenanted with better thingsThan e'er experience own'd—but both are mute;And past and future, vocal on all else,So full of memories and phantasies,Are deaf and speechless here! Fatigued, I turnFrom ail vain parley with the elements;And close mine eyes, and bid the thought turn inwardFrom each material thing its anxious guest,If, in the stillness of the waiting soul,He may vouchsafe himself, Spirit to spirit!Oh Thou, at once most dreaded and desired,Pavilion'd still in darkness, wilt thou hide thee? What though the rash request be fraught with fate,Nor human eye may look on thine and live!Welcome the penalty! let that come nowWhich soon or late must come. For light like thisWho would not dare to die?Peace, my proud aim,And hush the wish that knows not what it asks.Await his will, who hath appointed thisWith every other trial. Be that willDone now as ever. For thy curious search,And unprepared solicitude to gazeOn Him—the Unreveal'd—learn hence, instead,To temper highest hope with humbleness.Pass thy novitiate in those outer courts,Till rent the veil, no longer separatingThe holiest of all; as erst disclosingA brighter dispensation; whose results.Ineffable, interminable, tendE'en to the perfecting thyself, thy kind,Till meet for that sublime beatitude,By the firm promise of a voice from heavenPledged to the pure in heart!