The Port Gibson reveille. [volume] (Port Gibson, Miss.) 1890-current, 1908-04-02
immortality.
A POem by Percy W. Jones.

A POem by Percy w. Jones.
call the following performance
poem. Poem Is an august and
honorable word; but the only way
to make others pnt high estima-
ton on ones work is to estimate
it highly ourselves. And so these
thoughts that came to me in the
course of meditation on immortali-
ty I call a poem. In putting my
thoughts into metre rhyme l have
been surprised aud provoked at
the obstinacy and stubbornness of
the English language; for the lines
that are too long, l could not
squeeze into compactness and those
that are too short I could not
stretch out into resounding melody.
The consequence is that some of
the lines In my poem are so short
they look as if cut off without
benefit of clergy, while others, as
Macbeth might say, "stretch out
even to the crack of doom" This
is due to my own freshness and
youthful inexperience in writing
verse. but youthfulnesS is a fault
that all of us (myself among the
rest) will outgrow in the course of
time. Therefore 1 Rut this prose
preface here as a cAvEAT to the
Gentle Reader, for I know that of
ali beasts of burden the Gentle
Reader is the most oppressed and
batterwhanged. And now I shall
conclude this prose prologue by
saying thatin my poem, which fol-
lows, 1 have wrestled with the
rhymes and metres as Jacob wres-
tied with the Angel at Peniel, and
like the Patriarch, have come out
of the struggle halting upon one
thigh Genesis xxxii, "a and 25.)
How vain these speculations that men
give
To us about this little life we live.
Without God s Word to guide US on
Through all the maze of life,
How often we should fall anon,
With vague discussions rife.
Left to ourselves we have no hope
In darkness, still through darkness on we
grope.
We end where we began
A worthless theory is mans, more than
fruitless plan.
Has man no higher aim than this
To live and die below2
Is there in store no higher bliss
Than life can here bestow9
A mind electric in its power
Existing but through life's short hour,
L 0eQ DdCk 10 QdIkucSS QdSE4
Resplendent hopes and lofty aims.
That gIeam like sparks from heavenly
flames,
In nothingness to hash1
Oh false material philosophy,
That can with mud-born theories deny
The truth God gave to us. when He
Blessed us with immortality
That cannot fade, nor yet decay.
Though heaven and earth should pass
away.
The atheists have scofed.
But well we know the soul shall live,
Shall through eternity survive,
Exist through ages yet untold
When stars their silver mantles dofed)
Are changed to suns of gold.
Our life is like the silver light
We see come from the moon at night,
And scatters rainbows there
Upon the clouds that hang in air.
And on their edges puts fringe
OF softest silk with silver tinge.
Those rays of light shoot on through |
space
Swifter than oceans swiftess pace
Some burst in foam upon the shores
Of stars. and light their rocky floors.
So may we, by faith in God,
Attain at last the perfect rest
They have-the souls of spirits blest.
And in the reaches yet untrod
And windings infinite
That eye and ear have never seen nor
heard.
Freed from the stain and blight
Wherein the spirit erred
On earth. and went astray,
The soul thrice-blessed and crowned
Shall spurn the earth, and with bound
Burst from these bonds Of clay