LITMIR.BIZ

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she knew but all things hoped to know.

      In dark inconscient realms once void of thought,

      Missioned by a supreme Intelligence

      To throw its ray upon the obscure Vast,

      An imperfect light leading an erring mass

      By the power of sense and the idea and word,

      She ferrets out Nature’s process, substance, cause.

      All life to harmonise by thought’s control,

      She with the huge imbroglio struggles still;

      Ignorant of all but her own seeking mind

      To save the world from Ignorance she came.

      A sovereign worker through the centuries

      Observing and remoulding all that is,

      Confident she took up her stupendous charge.

      There the low bent and mighty figure sits

      Bowed under the arc-lamps of her factory home

      Amid the clatter and ringing of her tools.

      A rigorous stare in her creative eyes

      Coercing the plastic stuff of cosmic Mind,

      She sets the hard inventions of her brain

      In a pattern of eternal fixity:

      Indifferent to the cosmic dumb demand,

      Unconscious of too close realities,

      Of the unspoken thought, the voiceless heart,

      She leans to forge her credos and iron codes

      And metal structures to imprison life

      And mechanic models of all things that are.

      For the world seen she weaves a world conceived:

      She spins in stiff but unsubstantial lines

      Her gossamer word-webs of abstract thought,

      Her segment systems of the Infinite,

      Her theodicies and cosmogonic charts

      And myths by which she explains the inexplicable.

      At will she spaces in thin air of mind

      Like maps in the school-house of intellect hung,

      Forcing wide Truth into a narrow scheme,

      Her numberless warring strict philosophies;

      Out of Nature’s body of phenomenon

      She carves with Thought’s keen edge in rigid lines,

      Like rails for the World-Magician’s power to run,

      Her sciences precise and absolute.

      On the huge bare walls of human nescience

      Written round Nature’s deep dumb hieroglyphs

      She pens in clear demotic characters

      The vast encyclopaedia of her thoughts;

      An algebra of her mathematics’ signs,

      Her numbers and unerring formulas

      She builds to clinch her summary of things.

      On all sides runs as if in a cosmic mosque

      Tracing the scriptural verses of her laws

      The daedal of her patterned arabesques,

      Art of her wisdom, artifice of her lore.

      This art, this artifice are her only stock.

      In her high works of pure intelligence,

      In her withdrawal from the senses’ trap,

      There comes no breaking of the walls of mind,

      There leaps no rending flash of absolute power,

      There dawns no light of heavenly certitude.

      A million faces wears her knowledge here

      And every face is turbaned with a doubt.

      All now is questioned, all reduced to nought.

      Once monumental in their massive craft

      Her old great mythic writings disappear

      And into their place start strict ephemeral signs;

      This constant change spells progress to her eyes:

      Her thought is an endless march without a goal.

      There is no summit on which she can stand

      And see in a single glance the Infinite’s whole.

      An inconclusive play is Reason’s toil.

      Each strong idea can use her as its tool;

      Accepting every brief she pleads her case.

      Open to every thought, she cannot know.

      The eternal Advocate seated as judge

      Armours in logic’s invulnerable mail

      A thousand combatants for Truth’s veiled throne

      And sets on a high horse-back of argument

      To tilt for ever with a wordy lance

      In a mock tournament where none can win.

      Assaying thought’s values with her rigid tests

      Balanced she sits on wide and empty air,

      Aloof and pure in her impartial poise.

      Absolute her judgments seem but none is sure;

      Time cancels all her verdicts in appeal.

      Although like sunbeams to our glow-worm mind

      Her knowledge feigns to fall from a clear heaven,

      Its rays are a lantern’s lustres in the Night;

      She throws a glittering robe on Ignorance.

      But now is lost her ancient sovereign claim

      To rule mind’s high realm in her absolute right,

      Bind thought with logic’s forged infallible chain

      Or see truth nude in a bright abstract haze.

      A master and slave of stark phenomenon,

      She travels on the roads of erring sight

      Or looks upon a set mechanical world

      Constructed for her by her instruments.

      A bullock yoked in the cart of proven fact,

      She drags huge knowledge-bales through Matter’s dust

      To reach utility’s immense bazaar.

      Apprentice she has grown to her old drudge;

      An aided sense is her seeking’s arbiter.

      This now she uses as the assayer’s stone.

      As if she knew not facts are husks of truth,

      The husks she keeps, the kernel throws aside.

      An ancient wisdom fades into the past,

      The ages’ faith becomes an idle tale,

      God passes out of the awakened thought,

      An old discarded dream needed no more:

      Only she seeks mechanic Nature’s keys.

      Interpreting stone-laws inevitable

      She digs into Matter’s hard concealing soil,

      To unearth the processes of all things done.

      A

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