Read "The Question" by Thomas Nelson Page online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Why may I not step from this empty room, / Where heavy round me hangs the curtained gloom, / And passing through a little darkness there, / Even as one climbs to bed an unlit stair, / Find that I know is but one step above, / And that I hunger for: my Life: my Love?
'T is but a curtain doth our souls divide, / A veil my eager hand might tear aside -- / One step to take, one thrill, one throb, one bound, / And I have gained my Heaven, the Lost have found -- / Have solved the riddle rare, the secret dread: / The vast, unfathomable secret of the Dead.
It seems but now that as I yearning stand, / I might put forth my hand and touch her hand; / That I might lift my longing eyes and trace / But for the darkness there the gracious face; / That could I hush the grosser sounds, my ear / The charmed music of her voice might hear.
She may not come to me, Alas! I know, / Else had she surely come, long, long ago. / The Conqueror Death, who save One conquers all, / Had never power to hold that soul in thrall; / No narrowest prison-house; no piled up stone / Had held her heart a captive from my own.
No, 't is not these: Hell's might nor Heaven's charms, / Had never power to hold her from my arms; -- / 'T is that by some inscrutable, fixed Law, / Vaster than mortal vision ever saw, / Whose sweep is worlds; whose track Eternity, / Somewhere her soul angelic waits for me: --
Waits patiently His Wisdom, whose decree / Is Wisdom's self veiled in Infinity: / Who gives us Life divine with mortal breath, / Yet in its pathway, lo! hath planted Death; / Who grants us Love our dull souls to uplift / Nearer to Him; yet tears away His Gift;
Crowns us with Reason in His image made, / Yet blinds our eyes with never lifting shade. / Who may the mystery solve? 'T is His decree! / Can Mortal understand Infinity? / Prostrate thyself before His feet, dull clod, / Who saith, "Be still, and know that I am God."
Ah! did we surely know the joys that wait / Beyond the portal of the silent gate, / Who would a moment longer here abide, / The spectre, Sorrow, stalking at his side? / Who would not daring take the leap and be / Unbound, unfettered clean, a slave set free!