Pasquinade (from Clarel, Melville)

  

If Luther's day expand to Darwin's year,

Shall that exclude the hope—foreclose the fear?

   Unmoved by all the claims our times avow,

The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade;

And comes Despair, whom not her calm may cow,

And coldly on that adamantine brow

Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade.

But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns)

With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust,

Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns

The sign o' the cross—the spirit above the dust!

    Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate—

The harps of heaven and dreary gongs of hell;

Science the feud can only aggravate—

No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell:

The running battle of the star and clod

Shall run forever—if there be no God.

    Degrees we know, unknown in days before;

The light is greater, hence the shadow more;

And tantalized and apprehensive Man

Appealing—Wherefore ripen us to pain?

Seems there the spokesman of dumb Nature's train.

   But through such strange illusions have they passed

Who in life's pilgrimage have baffled striven—

Even death may prove unreal at the last,

And stoics be astounded into heaven.

   Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned—

Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind;

That like the crocus budding through the snow—

That like a swimmer rising from the deep—

That like a burning secret which doth go

Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep;

Emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea,

And prove that death but routs life into victory. 

From Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. This poem is in the public domain.