Tell me, my friend;
Across your faith (which, pardon me, I know
To be sincere and honest; else, indeed,
I had not spent this hour with you here;)
Across your faith, then, does there never creep
A haunting doubt it may not all be true?
For me, although my life were spanned above
With faith as honest as your own, if once
On the horizon there had dawned a doubt
No bigger than a pigmy’s little hand,
Then heaven would be always overcast
With possible untruth, and I should think
The stars I saw were but poor will-o’-the-wisps
Created in my brain, beyond which rolled
The eternal darkness of a blank despair.
Whereas now, living underneath a sky
Continually clouded,—when a rift
Shows me a tender heavenly blue beyond,
I fancy then the darkness overhead
May be a gathered mist of my poor brain,
Beyond which rolls, immortal and unstained,
The glory of the everlasting Truth!