ration
of the Lord's Supper in a Protestant church. All things have their
outer senses, and these outer senses have to be learned one at a time
by being flashed through with inner ones. Except to people who have
tried it, nothing could be more grotesque than kissing, as a form of
human expression. A reception--a roomful of people shouting at each
other three inches away--is comical enough. So is handshaking. Looked
at from the outside, what could be more unimpressive than the
spectacle of the greatest dignitary of the United States put in a vise
in his own house for three hours, having his hand squeezed by long
rows of people? And, taken as a whole, scurrying about in its din,
what could possibly be more grotesque than a great city--a city looked
at from almost any adequate, respectable place for an immortal soul to
look from--a star, for instance, or a beautiful life?

Whether he is looked at by ants or by angels, every outer token that
pertains to man is absurd and unfinished until some inner thing is put
with it. Man himself is futile and comic-looking (to the other
animals), rushing empty about space. New York is a spectacle for a
squirrel to laugh at, and, from the point of view of a mouse, a man is
a mere, stupid, sitting-down, skull-living, desk-infesting animal.

All these things being true of expression--both the expression of men
and of God--the fact that machines which have poetry in them do not
express it very well does not trouble me much. I do not forget the
look of the first ocean-engine I ever saw--four or five stories of it;
nor do I forget the look of the ocean-engine's engineer as in its
mighty heart-beat he stood with his strange, happy, helpless "Twelve
thousand horse-power, sir!" upon his lips.

That first night with my first engineer still follows me. The time
seems always coming back to me again when he brought me up from his
whirl of wheels in the hold to the deck of stars, and left me--my new
wonder all stumbling through me--alone with them and with my thoughts.

The engines breathe.
No sound but cinders on the sails
And the ghostly heave,
The voice the wind makes in the mast--
And dainty gales
And fluffs of mist and smoking stars
Floating past--
From night-lit funnels.

In the wild of the heart of God I stand.
Time and Space
Wheel past my face.
Forever. Everywhere.
I alone.
Beyond the Here and There
Now and Then
Of men,
Winds from the unknown