Perhaps it, too, throughout its breadth and length
Knew glorious impulse and desire high-flown
And felt the triumph of its tossing strength
                As if it were its own?

Who can say nay? For, adding each to each
The grains of knowledge that so precious seem,
We judge all science but a trope of speech
                 And wisdom but a dream.

Perhaps we, too, by such a tempest tossed
As rocks this barque are fragments of some sea
From which we rise and into which are lost
                  When we must cease to be?

For, as the wind strums through the anguished shrouds,
It mocks and, like a teacher sorely tasked,
It answers not but, mixing waves and clouds,
Flings merely back the questions which we asked.