Into the mist I gazed, and fear came on me,
Then said the mist: "I weep for the lost sun."
We sat beneath our tent;
Then he that hath no hope drew near us there,
And sat him down by us.
We asked him: "Hast thou seen the plains, the mountains?"
And he made answer: "I have seen them all."
And then his cloak he showed us, and his shirt,
Torn was the shirt, there, close above the heart,
Pierced was the breast, there, close above the heart -
The heart was gone.
And yet he trembled not, the while we looked,
And sought the heart, the heart that was not there.
He let us look. And he that had no hope
Smiled, that we grew so pale, and sang us songs.
Then we did envy him, that he could sing
Without a heart to suffer what he sang.
And when he went, he cast his cloak about him,
And those that met him, they could never guess
How that his shirt was torn about the heart,
And that his breast was pierced above the heart,
And that the heart was gone.
I gazed into the mist, and fear came on me,
Then said the mist: "I weep for the lost sun."
This poem of Omar and of Fitzgerald is perhaps our best expression of
the sadness and the grandeur of insoluble problems. It is the sweetness
of philosophical sorrow which has no kinship with misery or distress. In
the strains of the saddest music the soul finds the keenest delight. The
same sweet, sorrowful pleasure is felt in the play of the mind about the
riddles which it cannot solve.
In the presence of the infinite problem of life, the voice of Science is
dumb, for Science is the co?rdinate and corrected expression of human
experience, and human experience must stop with the limitations of human
life.
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