Sonnet

Seeking the fact that lies behind the flower

the soul will break its own mortality;

searching the time that lies beyond the hour

the soul will yield its blind serenity;

that is but briefly to be ill at ease

and then forever to be tranquil-eyed,

stirring the wrath of temporal deities

who hurl pale lightning when they are defied.

The least fine sheaf of millet will repay

the soul’s slow contemplation, and the still

ages of starlight between day and day;

the climb is steep to mount a sudden hill;

but if man, fearless, follows stars, he’ll find –

lo, he is more than stars, and more than mind.

~Jane Tyson Clement