* * * * * DESERT-THOUGHTS I hold with them who see Nor only idly stand The deed of thought to be Worth many deeds of hand. Ever as we journey sink The old behind the new, And Heav’n commands we think As justly as we do. One golden virtue more Than virtue we must prize, One iron duty more Than duty, to be wise. Who to himself hath said, ‘This chamber must be closed; This tract of truth I dread, This darkness God-imposed May not be lifted,’ keeps An ever-open door Thro’ which deception creeps, Confounding more and more, Until to wild extremes Of falsehood driv’n he dies, Intoxicate with dreams And drunk with a thousand lies. And more if he have taken A secret lie for friend, He shall be found forsaken, And terrible his end. So one doth travelling ride; A dreadful forest fears; Rejoiced at length a guide He meeteth unawares. With thunder overthrown Day dies in solitude; The guide, a monster grown, Devours him in the wood. Idle and base the cry ‘If it be so, so be it; But if it be so, then I Will look not lest I see it.’ Or this, ‘If it be so We lose this thing or that; ’Twere better not to know.’ The lightning spareth not The timorous soul who hides His head in danger thus: The iron fact abides; Things were not made for us. Who answers, who repines? Not he who works in love, But he who thinks divines The thing he cannot prove. He takes his stand and rolls The phrase he hopes for Heav’n, But cheats the hungry souls And gives them bread of leav’n. His ears are filled with wax, His bandaged eyeballs blind, And yet no doubts perplex, And he can see the wind. Though all in science good, By incessant question found, Beyond it strayed we brood And argue round and round; And where we hoped the end, Such distance we have come, Amazed we only find The point we started from; And fancies, like the breath We utter, do but prove A cloud above, beneath, To fog us as we move. We climb from cloud to cloud The airy precipice; Fain would we reach to God; We fall thro’ the abyss. The vapours will not bear. Wild-clutching we are hurl’d Thro’ measurements of air Again upon the world. Clear rings the answer high, ‘The mystery makes itself; The mystery is a lie; Be cleansed and know thyself.’ If with unshaken will, Resolving not to stray But to be rising still, We clamber day by day From truth to truth, at last, In valleys of the night Not lost, we know the vast And simple upper light,