alike are dust
And ashes in His sight.
Is it not meet
For those who bear His discipline, to say
I bow submissive to the chastening Hand
That smites my inmost soul? Oh teach me that
Which through my blindness I have failed to see,
For I have sinn'd, but will offend no more.
Say, is it right, Oh Job, for thee to hold
Thyself superior to the All-Perfect Mind?
If thou art righteous what giv'st thou to Him
Who sits above the heavens? Can He receive
Favor from mortals?
Open not thy mouth
To multiply vain words, but rather bow
Unto the teaching of His works that spread
So silently around. His snows descend
And make the green Earth hoary. Chains of frost
Straighten her breadth of waters. Dropping rains
Refresh her summer thirst, or rending clouds
Roll in wild deluge o'er her. Roaming beasts
Cower in their dens affrighted, while she quakes
Convuls'd with inward agony, or reels
Dizzied with flashing fires.
Again she smiles
In her recovered beauty, at His will,
Maker of all things. So, He rules the world,
With wrath commingling mercy. Who may hope
With finite mind to understand His ways,
So excellent in power, in wisdom deep,
In justice terrible, respecting none
Who pride themselves in fancied wisdom."
Hark!
On the discursive speech a whirlwind breaks,
Tornadoes shake the desert, thunders roll
And from the lightning's startled shrine, _a voice_!
The voice of the Eternal.
"Who is this
That darkeneth knowledge by unmeaning words?
Gird up thy loins and answer.
Where wert thou
When the foundations of the earth were laid?
Who stretch'd the line, and fix'd the corner-stone,
When the bright morning-stars together sang
And all the hosts that circle round the Throne
Shouted for joy?
Whose hand controll'd the sea
When it brake forth to whelm the new-fram'd world?
Who made dark night its cradle and the cloud
Its swaddling-band? commanding
"Hitherto
Come, but no further. At this line of sand
Stay thy proud waves."
Hast thou call'd forth the morn
From the empurpled chambers of the east,
Or bade the trembling day-spring know its place?
Have Orion's depths been open'd to thy view?
And hast thou trod his secret floor? or seen
The gates of Death's dark shade?
Where doth light dwell?
And ancient Darkness, tha