On and on, unceasing, move the constellations, Lessening nor increasing since the birth of nations: Sun and moon unfailing keep their times and seasons,-- But man, unavailing, pleads to thee for reasons. Why the great dumb mountains, why the ocean hoary-- Even the babbling fountains, older are than story, And his life's duration's but a few short marches Of the constellations through the heavenly arches! Even the oaks of Mamre, and the palms of Kedar, (Praising thee with psalmry) and the stately cedar, Through the cycling ages, stinted not are growing,-- While the holiest sages have not time for knowing. Mother whom we cherish, savage while so tender, Do the lilies perish mourning their lost splendor? Does the diamond shimmer brightlier that eternal Time makes nothing dimmer of its light supernal? Do the treasures hidden in earth's rocky bosom, Cry to men unbidden that they come and loose them? Is the dew of dawntide sad because the Summer Kissed to death the fawn-eyed Spring, the earlier comer? Would the golden vapors trooping over heaven, Quench the starry tapers of the sunless even? When the arrowy lightnings smite the rocks asunder, Do they shrink with frightenings from the bellowing thunder? Inconceivable Nature! these, thy inert creatures, With their sphinx-like stature, are of man the teachers; Silent, secret, passive, endless as the ages, 'Gainst their forces massive fruitlessly he rages. Winds and waves misuse him, buffet and destroy him; Thorns and pebbles bruise him, heat and cold annoy him; Sting of insect maddens, snarl of beast affrights him; Shade of forest saddens, breath of flowers delights him. O thou great, mysterious mother of all mystery! At thy lips imperious man entreats his history.-- Whence he came--and whither is his spirit fleeing: Ere it wandered hither had it other being: Will its subtile essence, passing through death's portal, Put on nobler presence in a life immortal? Or is man but matter, that a touch ungentle, Back again may shatter to forms elemental? Can mere atoms question how they feel sensation? Or dust make suggestion of its own creation? Yet if man were better than his base conditions, Could things baser fetter his sublime ambitions? What unknown conjunction of the pure etherial, With the form and function of the gross material, Gives the product mortal? whose immortal yearning Brings him to the portal of celestial learning. To the portal gleaming, where the waiting sphinxes, Humoring his dreaming, give him what he thinks is Key to the arcana--plausible equation Of the problems many in his incarnation.