ach of you will make
room for many.

[1] Address to the Graduating Class, Leland Stanford Jr. University,
May 21, 1896.

THE BUBBLES OF SAKI.

In sad, sweet cadence Persian Omar sings
The life of man that lasts but for a day;
A phantom caravan that hastes away,
On to the chaos of insensate things.

"The Eternal Saki from that bowl hath poured
Millions of bubbles like us and shall pour,"
Thy life or mine, a half-unspoken word,
A fleck of foam tossed on an unknown shore.

"When thou and I behind the veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last?
Which of our coming and departure heeds,
As the seven seas shall heed a pebble cast."

"Then, my beloved, fill the cup that clears
To-day of past regrets and future fears."
This is the only wisdom man can know,
"I come like water, and like wind I go."

But tell me, Omar, hast thou said the whole?
If such the bubbles that fill Saki's bowl,
How great is Saki, whose least whisper calls
Forth from the swirling mists a human soul!

Omar, one word of thine is but a breath,
A single cadence in thy perfect song;
And as its measures softly flow along,
A million cadences pass on to death.

Shall this one word withdraw itself in scorn,
Because 't is not thy first, nor last, nor all--
Because 't is not the sole breath thou hast drawn,
Nor yet the sweetest from thy lips let fall?

I do rejoice that when "of Me and Thee"
Men talk no longer, yet not less, but more,
The Eternal Saki still that bowl shall fill,
And ever stronger, purer bubbles pour.

One little note in the Eternal Song,
The Perfect Singer hath made place for me;
And not one atom in earth's wondrous throng
But shall be needful to Infinity.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of the Innumerable Company,
and Other Sketches, by David Starr Jordan

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