Frederick Philip Grove
THOUGHTS
(IM 1-14)

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e-Edition by Gaby Divay
© August 2007

University of Manitoba Libraries	FPG & FrL Collections	University of Manitoba Archives

THE PALINODE[78] by Frederick Philip Grove I. Life travels highways on this swinging earth, And they are now what they were eons past: From birth to death, and back perhaps to birth. It ever travels, at its self aghast. Yet, obstinate in spirit, men still try To catch up with the mystery they are By looping byways, loud with hue and cry Of science and research. 'It' flies afar. They have described the living universe-- Thus it appears to their thrice-sharpened sense,-- As if it were a sort of rolling hearse In which to bear our ache and longing hence. What underlies it, no one yet has found, It still eludes their over-subtile grasp. A cradle rocks us; buries us a mound: That much they may to their bold bosoms clasp. Though geologic ages they explore And sound the way one thought brings forth the next-- Still piling up their inconclusive lore-- The mystery remains a barren text. For ought we know we still are solemn toys To make those laugh who wrought us as a jest; For ought we know we still are but alloys Of beast and angel, human at the best; And what that means no one will ever tell --If then--till his last voyage he has tried. One single truth can we securely spell: For eons men were born, have lived, and died. II                           Stesichorus (traditionally)[79] Yet are there hours in which the soul expands, Freed from the thronging press of sense and thought: When eyes are closed; at rest the striving hands; And silence vaults; the night--hours found unsought. Then do we soar as in a sudden trance And seem to grasp as in some steep survey So birth as death, our twin inheritance, As parts of the same pattern--yea and nay Of some vast intercourse 'tween heaven and earth: Matter with soul inwoven, intertwined, And one the other imbuing with its worth Till each seems other: mind body, body mind. As if this clay lent what but it can give, The form of clay, the one which we can scan, To body forth for us what else must live Unseen, unknown, unsought, unthought by man. So that, by tracing it, we may begin Even here to bode the thing that flits behind And in the curving beauty of a chin A soul's immortal excellence to find. And if that form in earthly wise decays, Yet lives the knowledge that the soul, once there, But now departed, going its own ways, Must surely live though we do not know where. Yes, there are hours when, groping prophets, we, Conscious of nought but being, placed aloof, From all distractions and all trammels free, Know of a knowledge; subject to no proof. In Memoriam 13