The Angel in the Cloud. Edwin W. Fuller

bless the evil? Through the entire world

       Is felt this conflict: some strange power within

       Exciting us to good, while all events

       Proclaim its folly. Throughout Nature’s laws,

       Through man in every station, up to God,

       This fatal contradiction glares. The storm,

       With ruthless breath, annihilates the cot

       That, frail and humble, shields the widow’s head;

       And while she reads within the use-worn Book

       That none who trusts shall e’er be desolate,

       The falling timbers crush the promise out,

       And she is dead beneath her ruined home!

       The prostrate cottage passed, the very wind

       Now howls a rough but fawning lullaby

       Around the marble walls, and lofty dome,

       That shelter pride and heartless arrogance.

      And when the Boaz Winter throws his skirt

       Of purest white across the lap of Earth,

       And decks her bare arborial hair with gems,

       Whose feeblest flash would pale the Koh-i-noor,

       The rich, alone, find beauty in the scene,

       And, clad in thankless comfort, brave the cold.

       The gliding steels flash through the feathery drifts,

       The jingling bells proclaiming happiness;

       Yet ’neath the furry robe the oath is heard,

       And boisterous laughter at the ribald jest.

       The coldest hearts beat ’neath the warmest clothes;

       And often all the blessings wealth can give,

       Are heaped on one, whose daily life reviles

       The very name of Him who doth bestow.

       While in a freezing garret, o’er the coals

       That, bluely flickering with the feeble flame,

       Seem cold themselves, a trusting Christian bends;

       Her faith all mocked by cruel circumstance.

       The cold, bare walls, the chilling air-swept floor;

       Some broken stools, a mattress stuffed with straw,

       Upholstering the apartment. Through the sash,

       The wind, with jaggèd lips of broken glass,

       Shrieks in its freezing spite. A cold-blued babe,

       With face too thin to hold a dimple’s print,

       With famished gums tugs at the arid breast,

       Thrusting its bare, splotched arms, in eagerness,

       From out the poor white blanket’s ravelled edge.

       Beside the mother sits a little boy,

       With one red frost-cracked hand spread out, in vain,

       To warm above the faintly-burning coals;

       The other pressing hardly ’gainst his teeth

       A stale and tasteless loaf of smallest size,

       Which lifting often to the mother’s view,

       He offers part; she only shakes her head,

       And sadly smiles upon the gaunt young face.

       Yet in her basket, on a pile of work,

       An open Bible lies with outstretched leaves,

       Whose verses speak in keenest irony:

       “Do good,” and “verily thou shalt be fed.”

       And so through all the world, the righteous poor,

       The wicked rich. Deceit, and fraud, and craft

       Reap large rewards, while pure integrity

       Must gnaw the bone of faith with here and there

       A speck of flesh called consciousness of right,

       To reach the marrow in another world.

       But man within himself’s the greatest paradox;

       “A little animal,” as Voltaire says,

       And yet a greater wonder than the sun,

       Or spangled firmament. That little one

       Can weigh and measure all the wheeling worlds,

       But finds within his “five feet” home, a Sphinx

       Whose riddle he can never solve.

       “Thyself,”

       The oracles of old bade men to know,

       As if to mock their very impotence;

       And man, to know himself, for centuries

       Has toiled and studied deep, in vain.—

       Not man in flesh, for blest Hippocrates

       Bright trimmed his lamp, and passed it down the line,

       And each disciple adding of his oil,

       It blazes now above the ghastly corpse,

       Till every fibre, every thread-like vein,

       Is known familiar as a city’s streets;

       The little muscle twitching back the lip,

       Rejoicing in a name that spans the page.

       But man in mind, that is not seen nor felt,

       But only knows he is, through consciousness.

       He sees an outside world, with all its throng

       Of busy people who care not for him,

       And only few that know he does exist;

       And yet he feels the independent world

       Is but effect produced upon himself,

       The Universe is packed within his mind,

       His mind within its little house of clay.

       What is that mind? Has it a formal shape?

       And has it substance, color, weight, or force?

       What are the chains that bind it to the flesh?

       That never break except in death, though oft

       The faculties are sent far out through space?

       Where is it placed, in head, or hands, or feet?

       And can it have existence without place?

       And if a place, it must extension have,

       And if extended, it is matter proven.

       Poor man! he has but mind to view mind with,

       And might as well attempt to see the eye

       Without a mirror! True, faint consciousness

       Holds up a little glass, wherein he sees

       A few vague facts that cannot satisfy.

       For these, and their attendant laws, have fought

       The mental champions of the world till now

       That each may deck them in his livery,

       And claim them as his own discovery.

      Hedged in, man does not know that he is paled,

       And struggles fiercely ’gainst the boundaries,

       And strives to get a glimpse of those far realms

       Of thought sublime, where his short wings would sink

       With helpless fluttering, through the vast profound.

       Upon the coals of curiosity,

       A writhing worm, he’s laid; and twists and turns,