The Adventure of the Apocalypse

Greatness of Earth

G reatnessof earth—high mountain, ocean deep—

God's solar zenith, watching it, shall find

No difference ' twixt small thinker and huge mind!

Between sea-level andthe Himalaya's leap,

Between shore-level and the Pacific's plunge,

Full five miles stretch-five miles that ever sound

Marvellous, the earth's sublime, the earth's profound,

But a mere nought the astronomers expunge

From calculation of the grandeured gap

Across which throws the pure transcendent noon

Its shadow-banishing universal boon

As if the uneven earth were a single lap!

The Glory and the Power beyond all clay,

Poised in a mystic vacancy of trance—

The eternal Seerhood of one golden glance

Piercing each darkness with its infinite day—

Laughs at our wonder and terror of great men.

If some soar high and some strike deep, pride goes

With them to its pinnacle or self-thought grows

A larger hollow. In the Ethereal's ken

Their victories within earth's own domain

Are trifles: the undimmable truth-star

Millions and millions of dreaming miles afar

From mortal mights which never without stain

Reach their Himalayan or Pacific mood—

How shall this Splendour, with all dross consumed,

Care for such triumph? Every might is gloomed

To littleness when so divinely viewed.

Not human greatness but the ungauged soul

Widening in superhuman secrecy

And catching with no mountainous sweep the eye,

Calling the ear with no oceanic roll—

The light within that wakes when mortals sleep—

Is measured the true majesty—a rhyme

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To eternity's sun-heart by earth-heart's time!

Therefore the Grace Supreme shall never keep

The surface-judgments by which depth or height

We mark: it nulls them with its nameless law,

Moulds by swift miracles that none foresaw

History's long curve: its crowning favours slight

Our vision's winnowing of the great and small:

Even gambler, sinner, weakling, fool or waif

It picks out, leading the lost wanderer safe

Where every life attains the ecstatic All!

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