Round each its penumbra is drawn,--
I touch them,--I see not beyond.

What voice speaking solemn and slow,
Before the beginning for me,
From the mouth of the primal First Cause,
Shall teach me the thing that I was,
Shall point out the thing I shall be,
And show me the path that I go?

Were there any that missed me, or sought,
In the cycles and centuries fled.
Ere my soul had a place among men?--
Even so, unremembered again
I shall lie in the dust with the dead,
And my name shall be heard not, nor thought.

Yea rather,--from out the abyss,
Where the stars sit in silence and light,
When the ashes and dust of our world
Are like leaves in their faces up-whirled,--
What orb shall look down through the night,
And take note of the quenching of this?

Yea, beyond--in the heavens of space
Where Jehovah sits, absolute Lord,
Who made out of nothing the whole
Round world, and man's sentient soul--
Will He crush, like a creature abhorred,
What He fashioned with infinite grace