Poems (Commelin)/Questioning

by Anna Olcott Commelin

QUESTIONING.

My little bird within his cage is singing
   His gay, sweet song;
With joyous melody the room is ringing
   The whole day long.

Beyond his gilded cage he has no dreaming,
   His all, his home:
No care beside e'er shades his happy seeming,
   No wish to roam.

But when I ope his cage and bid him enter
   The mansion wide,
Where rooms and halls diverge as from a centre
   On every side,

He mutely stands to turn and gaze and wonder
   At space so vast:
Relations old and sense secure asunder
   Are rent at last.

So when, with midnight's radiance streaming o'er us,
   From earth we gaze
To worlds on worlds and spaces vast before us,
   Our thoughts we raise,—

We mutely stand to gaze with awe and longing
   Upon the sky,
Where suns and stars and planets fair are thronging
   In majesty:—

Where ends creation¢ where is its beginning?
   Is our refrain:
From the dread silences no answer winning—
   We ask in vain.