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To The Heavenly Power

by John Frederick Freeman

When this burning flesh

Burns down in Time's slow fire to a glowing ash;

When these lips have uttered

The last word, and the ears' last echoes fluttered;

And crumbled these firm bones

As in the chemic air soft blackened stones;

When all that was mortal made

Owns its mortality, proud yet afraid;

Then when I stumble in

The broad light, from this twilight weak and thin,

What of me will change,

What of that brightness will be new and strange?

Shall I indeed endure

New solitude in that high air and pure,

Aching for these fingers

On which my assur'd hand now shuts and lingers?

Now when I look back

On manhood's and on childhood's far-stretched track,

I see but a little child

In a green sunny world-home; there enisled

By another, cloudy world

Of unsailed waters all around him curled,

And he at home content

With the small sky of wonders over him bent:--

Lonely, yet not alone

Since all was friendly being all unknown;

To-day yesterday forgetting,

And never with to-morrow's sorrow fretting;

Not seeing good from ill

Since but to breathe and run and sleep was well;

Asking nor fearing nought

Since the body's nerves and veins held all his thought....

Such a child again shall I

Stray in some valley of infinity,

Where infinite finite seems

And nothing more immortal than my dreams?

Where earthly seasons play

Still with their snows and blossoms and night and day,

And no unsetting sun

Brightens the white cloud and awakes the moon?

In such half-life's half-light

To cloak with mortal an immortal sight?

With uninformed desire,

Shorn passion, gentle mind, contented fire,

Ignorant love; to run

But with the little journeys of the sun,

And at evening sleep

With birds and beasts, and stars rocked in the deep?

But maybe this man's mind

Will leave not its maturity behind,

And nothing will forget

Of all that teased or eased it here, while yet

A mortal dress it wore;

And these quick-darting thoughts and probings sore

More sharply then will turn;

And lonelier and yet hungrier the heart burn.

O, I would not forget

Earth is too rich, too dark, too sour, too sweet:--

Nor be divorc'd quite

From the late tingling of the nerves' delight.

Less I would never be

Than the deep-graving years have made of me--

A memory, pulse, mind,

Seed and harvest, a reaper and sower blind.

I shall no more be I

If I forget the world's joy and agony;

If I forget how strong

Is the assault of scarce-rebuk'd wrong.

I shall no more be I

If my ears hear not earth's embittered cry

Perpetual; and forget

The unrighteous shackles on man's ankle set;

If no more my heart beat

Quicker because on earth is something sweet;

I shall no more be I

If the ancestral voices no more sigh

Familiar in my brain,

And leave me to cold silence and its pain,

And the bewildered stare

On an unhomely land in biting air:

If the blood no more vex

The heart with the importunities of sex,

If indeed marriage bind

No more body to body, mind to mind,

And love be powerless, cold,

That once by love's strength only was controlled,

And that chief spiritual force

Be dam'd back and stretch frozen to its source....

To the Heavenly Power I cry,

Foiled by these dreams of immortality,

"Let all be as Thou wilt,

And the foundations in Thy dark mind built;

Even infinity

Be but imagination's dream of Thee;

And let thought still, still

Vainly its waves on night's cliff break and spill.

"But, Heavenly Power," I'd cry,

Knowing how, near or far, He still is nigh,

"When this burning flesh

Is burnt away to a little driven ash,

What thing soever shall rise

From that cold ash unseen to unseen skies,

Grant that so much of me

Shall rise as may remember Thy world, and Thee."