Quest: From

WHERE broods the Absolute, Or shuns our long pursuit By fiery utmost pathways out of ken? Fleeter than sunbeams, lo, Our passionate spirits go, And traverse immemorial space, and then Look off, and look in vain, to find The master-clew to all they left behind. White orbs like angels pass Before the triple glass, That men may scan the record of each flame,— Of spectral line and line The legendry divine,— Finding their mould the same, and aye the same, The atoms that we knew before Of which ourselves are made,—dust, and no more. So let our defter art Probe the warm brain, and part Each convolution of the trembling shell: But whither now has fled The sense to matter wed That murmured here? All silence, such as fell When to the shrine beyond the Ark The soldiers reached, and found it void and dark. Seek elsewhere, and in vain The wings of morning chain; Their speed transmute to fire, and bring the Light, The co-eternal beam Of the blind minstrel’s dream; But think not that bright heat to know aright, Nor how the trodden seed takes root, Waked by its glow, and climbs to flower and fruit. Behind each captured law Weird shadows give us awe; Press with your swords, the phantoms still evade; Through our alertest host Wanders at ease some ghost, Now here, now there, by no enchantment laid, And works upon our souls its will, Leading us on to subtler mazes still. We think, we feel, we are; And light, as of a star, Gropes through the mist,—a little light is given; And aye from life and death We strive, with indrawn breath, To somehow wrest the truth, and long have striven, Nor pause, though book and star and clod Reply, Canst thou by searching find out God? As from the hollow deep The soul’s strong tide must keep Its purpose still. We rest not, though we hear No voice from heaven let fall, No chant antiphonal Sounding through sunlit clefts that open near; We look not outward, but within, And think not quite to end as we begin.