The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse
Lines, On a Re-reading of Parts of the Old TestamentWilliam Wilfred Campbell (18611918)
S
Great Volume of the ages! older far
Than Cheops’ Pyramid or the Parthenon;
And yet as new as yester-even’s star,
The world’s great weariness and day’s decline.
What are all earth’s ambitions, gain and loss,
Her hopes ephemeral; when thou art mine?
Amid those fevered fonts of heathen wine,
Graven in truth’s deep rock that shall endure,
So greatly human, yet so all divine!
Grim adamantine wall of evil doom;
But when I drink thy living draught, I cast
Aside this vesture of material gloom;
And out, and up, beyond, eternally,
Those stairways of God’s ages; and man’s part
In all that greatness, gone, and yet to be!