Philosophies

Name: Philosophies
Author: Ross, Ronald, Sir
Ross, Ronald, Sir
Poetry
O silent Sepulchre,
      Great East, disastrous clime;
    O grave of things that were;
      O catacombs of time;

    O silent catacombs;
      O blear’d memorial stones;
    Where laughing in the tombs
      Death plays with mouldering bones;

    And through dead bones the stalk
      Of the living herb is thrust;
    And we, the living, walk
      In wastes of human dust.

    Dust—thou art dust. Thy Sun,
      Thy lord, and lord of dust,
    Doth stamp thee into one
      Great plain of dust; and dust

    Thy heav’ns, thy nights, thy days;
      Thy temples and thy creeds;
    Thy crumbling palaces;
      Thy far forgotten deeds,—

    Infinite dust. Half living,
      We clothe ourselves in dust
    And live, not to be living,
      But because we must.

    Thy winds are full of death;
      Death comes we know not whence;
    Thy forests have a breath
      Of secret pestilence;

    Thy rivers rolling large
      Are blest with no sweet green,
    But silent at the marge
      The waiting monsters seen.

    No scented silence, eve,
      But night a noisy gloom;
    And we thy captives live,
      The derelicts of doom.

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                                   II


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            VOX CLAMANTIS

                  I

    Long, long the barren years;
      Long, long, O God, hast thou
    Appointed for our tears
      This term of exile. Lo,

    Life is but nothing thus:
      Old friendships perishèd;
    Not hand in hand with us
      The dying father dead;

    Narrow’d the mind that should
      Thro’ all experience range
    And grow; in solitude
      Unheard the wheels of change.

    When sadly numbering
      The wasted golden hours
    Our fate hath put to wing,
      That had perchance been ours

    To have seen, to have known, to have trod
      About from pole to girth
    This heritage of God,
      This wondrous sculptured earth,

    Seeing that never again
      The usurer Time gives back,
    How should we not complain
      This Present, barren-black?

    We said, ‘We must not mourn;
      The end is always good;
    Well past the pain well borne.’
      But Sorrow in her mood

    Would not be comforted,
      And cried, ‘I know the truth;
    Where are the distant dead,
      And where the wasted youth?

    Let Wisdom take her ground
      And Hope do what she can;
    Ill heals the dreadful wound
      That severs half a man.’

    Sorrow, not so beguiled,
      Would take my hand and lead,
    But waiting Wisdom smiled
      And took my hand instead,

    And answered, ‘Well I rede
      The shackled win the goal;
    The body’s strengthener Need,
      And Sorrow of the soul.

    But mine the part be given
      To guide and hers to follow,
    And so win thro’ to heaven.’
      And Sorrow said, ‘I follow.’


                 II
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Philosophies

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