Ambergris

AMBERGRIS 17 Glory and love and work precipitate The end of man’s desire—so sayeth Fate. Man answers : Love is stronger, work more sure, Glory more fadeless than her shafts abate. Though all worlds fail, the pulse of Life be still, God fall, all darken, she hath not her will Of deeds beyond recall, that shall endure : For us, these three divinest glasses fill, Fill to the brim with lustrous dew, nor fail To leave the blossom and the nightingale, Loves earlier kiss, and manhood’s glowing prime ! Let these suffice. Shall man or Fate prevail ? Low, we are blind, and dubious fingers grope In Despair’s dungeon for the key of Hope ; Lo, we are chained, and with a broken rhyme Would file our fetters and enlarge our scope. Yet ants may move the mountain ; none is small But he who stretches out no arm at all : Toadstools have wrecked fair cities in a night : One poet’s song may bid a kingdom fall. Add to thy fellow-men one ounce of aid— The block begins to shift, the start is made : The rest is thine ; with overwhelming might The balance changes, and the task is paid. Join’st thou thy feeble hands in foolish prayer To him thy brain hath moulded and set there In thy brain’s heaven ? Such a god replies As thy fears move. So men pray everywhere What God there be, is real. By His might Begot the universe within the night ; If He had prayed to His own mind’s weak lies Think’st thou the heaven and earth had stood upright ?