Selected Poetry.

Marlborough Express, Volume V, Issue 241, 23 July 1870, Page 6

Selected Poetry.

“LIGHT, MORE LIGHT!” What is the name for the Future to give To this age with Its restless moving ? Its changing efforts better to live, Its multiplied searching and proving : Every form of the teeming life. In the heart or the earth found lying, Ever is weighed with emulous strife, And an endless praying and crying, “ Light, more light!” Moeking at distance, under the deep, Our secrets cherished are bounding. Spite of the waves witli their howling sweep, Our whispers electric are sounding ; Even the mysteries Neptune thought Sacred and free he was saving, Down in his darken’d caves we've sought And still with the yearning and craving, “ Light, more light !” We take the hidden in humble life, That life with its ebbing and flowing ; Bare its breast to the pi nner’s knife, And watch ev’ry act in its growing. Never a tale must Nature keep Back from our ceaseless enquiring, E’en when her charms are cradled in sleep We seek them with earnest aspiring—- * Light, more light!” With dry old fossils we modify creeds ; Is it all progress, our changing? Will knowledge e’er have all that it needs, And limits be placed to our ranging ? With a reverent union of thought, Will one form e’er govern our praying ? Only one God—one way—to be sought, Was the dying want that when saying “ Light, more light!” Say, when the death-film covers the eye, Its view of the outer world clouding, Are there not moments e’er the last sigh, When the mystery’s reft of its shrouding ? All we have gather’d seeming but sand And nothingness, out of our poring— Then lift we the tremulous hand, And the last faint cry of imploring, “ Light, more light ?”