Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems, Complete

TRUST.

     The same old baffling questions! O my friend,
     I cannot answer them. In vain I send
     My soul into the dark, where never burn
     The lamps of science, nor the natural light
     Of Reason's sun and stars! I cannot learn
     Their great and solemn meanings, nor discern
     The awful secrets of the eyes which turn
     Evermore on us through the day and night
     With silent challenge and a dumb demand,
     Proffering the riddles of the dread unknown,
     Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone,
     Questioning the centuries from their veils of sand!
     I have no answer for myself or thee,
     Save that I learned beside my mother's knee;
     "All is of God that is, and is to be;
     And God is good." Let this suffice us still,
     Resting in childlike trust upon His will
     Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill.

     1853.