Classic Poem

I.

Will it be, will it be, in the ages to come,
 In the years of our life in other spheres,
When we shall have gathered the whole vast sum
Of suffering, and winnowed the wheat from the chaff?
 Or will the small scope of the years
We spend on this earth,
In plenty and dearth,
Wherein we labor and seldom laugh,
Reveal the precious, the priceless boon,
The meaning, the sense of the mystic rune,
Inscribed on our foreheads, engraved on our hearts?

II.

Ah, the earth is old and gray:
In the voice of the night and sound of the day,
In the cry of its deep abysses
And all its wildernesses,
In the howl of jungled beast and hiss of crested snake,
 In the moan of the vast immemorial sea,
  In the sigh of the homeless wind,
In the pitiless fall of the snow, fierce flake by flake,
  In the winter trees like old age pinched and thinned,
 In the sobs of all living things that be,
In the tears of the poor in the pestilent city
Over whom the skies shut devoid of pity,
In the whole wide anguish,
Wherein the slow months languish,
That nowhere finds Hope, or Heaven, or God,
But back into the night of fear has trod,—
In the one large toil of the world and the soul,
Do you note the stress of longing?

III.

What is it that we seek?
What is it that we crave?
In the atmosphere chill and bleak—
 Wherein we dwell—
Our breathing is hard and slow:
We call on Nature to save;
 We strive to burst the spell
That binds us in bonds we deeply know.

IV.

With passion, with might,
We seek the light.
Like the plantlet in the ground,
Like a soul in a swound,
Like a truth expressed in speech,
Like a heart endowed to teach,
Like a poet rudely hurled
In the tumult of the world,
Like a prophet whom men scorn,
Like a world in space new-born,
With passion and with might
We seek the light.

V.

This is the sense of the mystic rune
 Inscribed on our foreheads, engraved on our hearts;
This is the sense of the marvellous tune
 The bent trees sing, when the wild wind parts
The thick-woven clouds that hide the sky;
The bee in the clover,
The swift bird-rover
Seeking the climes that warmly lie
 In the sun's straight beam,
The flush of summer, the return of spring,
The sweet new thoughts May and April bring,
 The voice of the loosened stream
When winter has sought his northern lair,
And the earth rejoices in the sunlight fair,
 The growth of grasses, the shinings of stars,
  The interchange of night and day,
 All growth that struggles to burst the bars
  Setting it hinderance and delay,
 All storm, all tumult, that fills the breast,
  Utters the secret as best it may,
 Life seeks a beyond, a highest, a best.

VI.

Will it be, will it be,
 Will the sure light shine?—
Behind the veil, beyond the sea,
 Will peace be thine and mine?

VII.

Lo! the stress of longing shall create
That it longs for; bear and wait;
Lo! the ages in their toil and dust
Have not faltered in their trust;
Life shall widen, grow completer,
Passion fainter, labor sweeter;
In the longing see expressed
Promise of the happy rest.
Since the soul is nobler far
Than all things that in time are,
Not in temporal gauds and goods
Can its higher-flying moods
Find the calm it seeks perforce:
Nobler, loftier is its course.
Therefore through all Nature's spheres
Ceaseless longing still appears;
Therefore passion, bitter pain,
Reigns within the soul's domain.

VIII.

Complete is the soul,
It demands the whole;
Its rest is sure,
And shall endure.
Through the might of longing it will surely gain
Its dwelling upon the celestial plain;
Clothed in the sun, and robed in the sky,
Knowing nor low nor high,
At the heart of things, in the bosom of God,
Its journeyings will end, all roads overtrod.