Implicit Faith

[Ghost Ship]

By Aubrey Thomas De Vere (1814–1902)

OF all great Nature’s tones that sweep

Earth’s resonant bosom, far or near,

Low-breathed or loudest, shrill or deep,

How few are grasped by mortal ear.

Ten octaves close our scale of sound:

Its myriad grades, distinct or twined,

Transcend our hearing’s petty bound,

To us as colours to the blind.

In Sound’s unmeasured empire thus

The heights, the depths alike we miss;

Ah, but in measured sound to us

A compensating spell there is!

In holy music’s golden speech

Remotest notes to notes respond:

Each octave is a world; yet each

Vibrates to worlds its own beyond.

Our narrow pale the vast resumes;

Our sea-shell whispers of the sea:

Echoes are ours of angel-plumes

That winnow far infinity!

—Clasp thou of Truth the central core!

Hold fast that centre’s central sense!

An atom there shall fill thee more

Than realms on Truth’s circumference.

That cradled Saviour, mute and small,

Was God—is God while worlds endure!

Who holds Truth truly holds it all

In essence, or in miniature.

Know what thou know’st! He knoweth much

Who knows not many things: and he

Knows most whose knowledge hath a touch

Of God’s divine simplicity.