The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hoag/Eternal Recurrence

by Jonathan E. Hoag

Eternal Recurrence

 

Shades of the past! whose dim remembered forms
Drift vaguely down through Time's effacing storms,
Say, shall your antique eons come again,
To bare your secrets to the listening plain?
Mark yonder hills of sempiternal green,
Beyond whose crests still higher mounts are seen;
Whose hoary summits were in pomp upthrown,
Ere man or beast upon the earth was known.
Shall they, whose granite heads so proudly rise,
Sink prostrate and once more ascend the skies?
Would that we knew the sights that long ago
These patriarchs saw, amidst their primal snow!
Each hoary Alp a story has to tell
Of how the elder gods arose and fell;
Vulcan's hot force the restless Etna knows;
Atlas is bent with wisdom and with woes;
While silent in the Himalayan waste
Stands Everest, with future knowledge graced.

And thou, dark Perneb, whose abysmal tomb
Lay deep amidst the Pyramids' dense gloom;
Whose silent form the wondering present links
To ancient secrets of the subtle Sphinx:
Didst thou thy mummied form and grave remote
Choose with the thought that thou shouldst upward float
And born again, in future eons smile
Once more a monarch by thy sacred Nile?
Of thy dim line was he who rashly drave
The sons of Sion through the parted wave;
The sons of Solyma, who scattered wide
For days of vast returning splendor bide.

Some day again may sound the song of old:
"Ye I had gathered in my blessed fold,
But with vile, taunting words and bitter cry
Ye nailed me to the cruel Cross to die!"
Then see! a beaming Eastern comet glows
Where Abraham's sons in distant times arose,
And in its ancient home a harassed race
Shall find a Temple and a resting-place!

1921