Life's Mystery

I live, I move, I know not how, nor why,
    Float as a transient bubble on the air,
As fades the eventide I, too, must die;
    I came, I know not whence; I journey, where?

Alfred Castner King

Alfred Castner King was an American poet. He is recognized for his significant contributions to American poetry. Despite battling with blindness, his disability did not deter him from crafting poetry that captivated many readers. King often wrote about nature and personal experiences, reflecting a deep appreciation for the world around him and the nuances of human emotion.

Alfred Castner King

Fame.

Alfred Castner King, Simple Poetry

Grandeur.

Alfred Castner King, Simple Poetry

If I Have Lived Before.

Alfred Castner King, Simple Poetry

In Deo Fides.

Alfred Castner King, Simple Poetry

English

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The Unknowable.

O! Sun, resplendent in the smiling morn,
    As thou dost view the wastes of earth and sky,
Canst thou behold the realms of the Unborn,
    Canst thou behold the realms of those who die?
Where dwells the spirit e'er its mortal birth,
        E'er yet it suffereth
The pain and sorrow incident to earth?
        Where after death?
The Sun gave answer, with refulgent glow:
Child of a fleeting hour, thou too must die to know.

Canst tell, thou jeweled canopy of space,
    Bewildering, and boundless to the eyes,
Knowest thou the unborn spirits' dwelling place?
    Knowest thou the distant regions of the skies
Where rest the spirits freed from mundane strife,
        From mortal grief and care?
Knowest thou the secret of the future life?
        Canst thou ...

Alfred Castner King

In Mortem Meditare.

DYING THOUGHTS.


As Life's receding sunset fades
    And night descends,
I calmly watch the gathering shades,
As darkness stealthily invades
    And daylight ends.

Earth's span is drawing to its close,
    With every breath;
My pain-racked brain no respite knows,
Yet shrinks it, from the grim repose
    It feels in death.

The curtain falls on Life's last scene,
    The end is neared;
At last I face death's somber screen,
The fleeting joys which intervene
    Have disappeared.

And as a panoramic scroll
    The past unreels;
The mocking past, beyond control,
Though buried, as a parchment roll,
    Its tale reveals.

I stand before the dread, unknown,
    Yet solemn fact;
I see the seeds of foll...

Alfred Castner King

Humanity's Stream.

I stood upon a crowded thoroughfare,
Within a city's confines, where were met
All classes and conditions, and surveyed,
From a secluded niche or aperture,
The various, ever-changing multitude
Which passed along in restless turbulence,
And, as a human river, ebbed and flowed
Within its banks of brick and masonry.

Within this vast and heterogeneous throng,
One might discern all stages and degrees,
From wealth and power to helpless indigence;
Extravagance to trenchant penury,
And all extremes of want and misery.
Some blest by wealth, some cursed by poverty;
Some in positions neutral to them both;
Some wore a gaunt and ill-conditioned look
Which told its tale of lack of nourishment;
While others showed that irritated air
Which speaks of gout and pa...

Alfred Castner King

Things Mysterious.

This earth's a mystery profound,
Its movements, make, and changes all -
A mystery which none can sound,
Who dwell upon the whirling ball.

And deeper far than all the rest,
Is man; a mystery unsolved
Since the first heave of ocean's breast,
Since the first course our earth revolv'd.

His thoughts, and e'en his actions too,
Possess a subtle meaning, when
That meaning others may construe,
As plain and open to their ken.

There is a place in every heart,
As secret as the silent tomb,
Where others have no lot nor part,
Where none may gaze, where none may room.

It seemeth strange, that flesh and blood
Should hold such ghostly, hellish things,
And also things supremely good,
Which might not shame an angel's wings.

Yet s...

Thomas Frederick Young

The Mystery.

My mind is like a troubled sea
O'er which the winds forever sweep;
Within its depths, eternally,
My being's pulses throb and leap;
There germs of contemplation sleep,
Like stars beyond the Milky Way, -
Like pearls within the gloomy deep,
That never saw the light of day.

Oh, wondrous mind, how little known!
Whence comes the thought that through my brain
Floats weirdlike as the pleasing tone
That quickens a belovèd strain?
It may have graced some sweet refrain
A thousand years ago, or more;
Some Norman Prince, some valiant Dane,
May have imbibed it with their lore.

It may have strengthened Plato's soul,
Its clarion echoes ringing through
His brain, the heaven-reaching goal
Whence wisdom had its starry view;
It may have cheered the...

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As the Shifting Sands of the Desert.

As the shifting sands of the desert
    Are born by the simoon's wrath,
And in wanton and fleet confusion,
    Are strewn on its trackless path;
So our lives with resistless fury,
    Insensibly and unknown,
With a restless vacillation
    By the winds of fate are blown;
    But an All-Wise Hand
    May have changed the sand,
    For a purpose of His own.

As the troubled and turbulent waters,
    As the waves of the angry main,
Respond with their undulations
    To the breath of the hurricane;
So our lives on Time's boundless ocean
    Unwittingly toss and roll,
And unconsciously drift with the current
    Which evades our assumed control;
    But a Hand of love,
    From the skies above,
    May have guided us past a shoal.

Alfred Castner King