by
Arthur Hugh Clough
What we, when face to face we see
The Father of our souls, shall be,
John tells us, doth not yet appear;
Ah! did he tell what we are here!
A mind for thoughts to pass into,
A heart for loves to travel through,
Five senses to detect things near,
Is this the whole that we are here?
Rules baffle instincts--instinct rules,
Wise men are bad--and good are fools,
Facts evil--wishes vain appear,
We cannot go, why are we here?
O may we for assurance's sake,
Some arbitrary judgement take,
And wilfully pronounce it clear,
For this or that 'tis we are here?
Or is it right, and will it do,
To pace the sad confusion through,
And say:--It doth not yet appear,
What we shall be, what we are here?
Ah yet, when all is thought and said,
The heart still overrules the head;
Still what we hope we must believe,
And what is given us receive;
Must still believe, for still we hope
That in a world of larger scope,
What here is faithfully begun
Will be completed, not undone.
My child, we still must think, when we
That ampler life together see,
Some true result will yet appear
Of what we are, together, here.
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by
Walt Whitman
I NEED no assurances—I am a man who is preoccupied, of his own Soul;
I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of,
are
now looking faces I am not cognizant of—calm and actual faces;
I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the
world;
I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless—in vain I try to
think
how limitless;
I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of orbs, play their swift sports through the
air
on purpose—and that I shall one day be eligible to do as much as they, and more than
they;
I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on, millions of years;
I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors—and
that
the eye-sight has another eye-sight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice
another
voice;
I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for—and
that
the deaths of young women, and the deaths of little children, are provided for;
(Did you think Life was so well provided for—and Death, the purport of all Life, is
not
well provided for?)
I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them—no matter whose
wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down, are provided for, to the minutest
points;
I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen, any where, at any time, is provided for,
in
the inherences of things;
I do not think Life provides for all, and for Time and Space—but I believe Heavenly
Death
provides for all.
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