Whither Now

But man’s deliverances intervene
Between the soul’s swift speech and God’s high will;
That saith to tempests of the thought, “Be still!”
And in life’s lazaretto maketh clean

The leprous sense. Ah, who can find his way
Among the many altars? Who can call
Out perfect peace from any ritual,
Or shelter find in systems of a day?

As one sees on some ancient urn, upthrown
From out a tomb, records that none may read
With like interpretation, and the stone

Retains its graven fealty to the dead:
So, on the great palimpsest men have writ
Such lines o’ercrossed that none interprets it.