The Soul's Quest and Other Poems

by Frederick George Scott

 

TRUTH

 
I SAW Truth on the mountains, golden-shod
    With day-dawn, girt about with skies
    Of azure mist, half veiling from man’s eyes
Her silent face and gaze upturned to God.
Beneath were clouded steeps of shale and sod,
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    Tracked deviously by feet that human-wise
    Toiled upward, but toiled vainly towards the prize;
Some following, shunning some where others trod.

Yet in the darkness oft there came, “I see,”
    From eager hearts I met. “Behold!” men cried,
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        Yet variously; “such are Truth’s features high.”
Self’s shadow, form the soul’s intensity
    Cast on the mist, not such the face I spied,
        Calm, sovereign, silent, upturned ’midst the sky.

1887.