On the Mystery of New Life

What sacred myst’ries lie within our view,
And what unspoken wonders still accrue:

Though heedless souls still hurry in their tracks,
Distracted, thoughtless, toward the De’ty’s acts;

But those more pond’rous, who can bear the weight
To think of mysteries, and to meditate,

Will find at once a secret hid in view
Too hard to tell, yet giv’n with every clue – 

That in recesses of the darkened womb
The human souls the mortal forms assume.

No meager creature is this new-formed soul:
Design’d to know God, and his praise extol!

Betwixt the angel and the mortal brute,
Imago Dei, his life doth constitute.

Yet though such forms are wondrous to behold
They’re shaped in secret, from an earthy mould;

Hence nat’ral ways begin the natal life,
A pow’r of heaven, though pledged to man and wife.

Yet skeptics wonder and the thinkers strive
In vain to order, and from thought derive

How humankind begins a single cell,
A full-formed soul, eternal, doth indwell.

Then banish quick all talk of nat’ral laws,
Cartesian thought, and the Darwin’an cause;

Though NEWTON closed the spheres within his plan,
COPERNICUS, the heav’nly bodies span;

And men of science, who are duly trained,
Observe a cosmos that is self-contained,

(No fault of theirs, to bend all schemes to plan – 
Colliding atoms, and the starry span)

But though these theories – if they truly be – 
May have their place, they yet are not a key

To understand the marvels and the plan,
Of all creation, and the God-made man,

To tell how man is knit within the dark
Eternal forms unite with mortal barque.

Much better, then, to stand in awe, and mute,
Silent in wonder, and in vain compute,

That Providence which made the stars and earth,
And guides conception to its humble birth.