There is a quest that calls me,
In nights when I am lone,
The need to ride where the ways divide
The Known from the Unknown.
...
I have heard the wild geese,
I have seen the leaves fall,
There was frost last night
On the garden wall.
...
When the wind is low, and the sea is soft,
And the far heat-lightning plays
On the rim of the west where dark clouds nest
On a darker bank of haze;
...
I
O white Priest of Eternity, around
Whose lofty summit veiling clouds arise
...
Thirteenth Century
The bells of Oseney
(Hautclere, Doucement, Austyn)
...
Is there no voice in the world to come crying,
"New dreams for old!
New for old!"?
Many have long in my heart been lying,
...
(At the Grand Canyon)
My brother, man, shapes him a plan
And builds him a house in a day,
...
Who looks too long from his window
At the gray, wide, cold sea,
Where breakers scour the beaches
With fingers of sharp foam;
...
A gleaming glassy ocean
Under a sky of grey;
A tide that dreams of motion,
Or moves, as the dead may;
...
(_At Hong-kong_)
I was weary and slept on the Peak;
The air clung close like a shroud,
And ever the blue-fly's buzz in my ear
...
Under the sea, which is their sky, they rise
To watery altitudes as vast as those
Of far Himalayan peaks impent in snows
And veils of cloud and sacred deep repose.
...
Cale Young Rice (December 11, 1872 – January 24, 1943) was an American poet and dramatist. He was born in Dixon, Kentucky to Laban Marchbanks Rice, a Confederate veteran and tobacco merchant, and his wife Martha Lacy. He was a younger brother of Laban Lacy Rice, a noted educator. Cale Rice grew up in Evansville, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky. He was educated at Cumberland University and at Harvard (A.B., 1895; A.M., 1896). He was married to the popular author Alice Hegan Rice; they worked together on several books. The marriage was childless, and Cale committed suicide at his home in Louisville a year after her death due to his sorrow at losing her. Cale Rice's poems were collected and published in a single volume by his brother, Laban Lacy Rice. His birthplace in Dixon is designated by Kentucky State Historical Marker 1508.)
The Mystic
There is a quest that calls me,
In nights when I am lone,
The need to ride where the ways divide
The Known from the Unknown.
I mount what thought is near me
And soon I reach the place,
The tenuous rim where the Seen grows dim
And the Sightless hides its face.
~I have ridden the wind,
I have ridden the sea,
I have ridden the moon and stars.
I have set my feet in the stirrup seat
Of a comet coursing Mars.
And everywhere
Thro' the earth and air
My thought speeds, lightning-shod,
It comes to a place where checking pace
It cries, "Beyond lies God!"~
It calls me out of the darkness,
It calls me out of sleep,
"Ride! ride! for you must, to the end of Dust!"
It bids -- and on I sweep
To the wide outposts of Being,
Where there is Gulf alone --
And thro' a Vast that was never passed
I listen for Life's tone.
~I have ridden the wind,
I have ridden the night,
I have ridden the ghosts that flee
From the vaults of death like a chilling breath
Over eternity.
And everywhere
Is the world laid bare --
Ether and star and clod --
Until I wind to its brink and find
But the cry, "Beyond lies God!"~
It calls me and ever calls me!
And vainly I reply,
"Fools only ride where the ways divide
What Is from the Whence and Why"!
I'm lifted into the saddle
Of thoughts too strong to tame
And down the deeps and over the steeps
I find -- ever the same.
~I have ridden the wind,
I have ridden the stars,
I have ridden the force that flies
With far intent thro' the firmament
And each to each allies.
And everywhere
That a thought may dare
To gallop, mine has trod --
Only to stand at last on the strand
Where just beyond lies God.~
I would I might forget that I am I
I would I might forget that I am I,
And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,
Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.
What in the body's tomb doth buried lie
Is boundless; 't is the spirit of the sky,
Lord of the future, guardian of the past,
And soon must forth, to know his own at last.
In his large life to live, I fain would die.
Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food,
But calling not his suffering his own;
Blessed the angel, gazing on all good,
But knowing not he sits upon a throne;
Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood,
And doomed to know his aching heart alone.