(A Modernity)
 Twelve good friends
 Passed under her hat,
 And devil a one of them
 Knew where he was at.
 Had they but known,
 Then had they known all things, --
 The littleness of great things,
 The unmeasured immensity of small things.
 They had known the Where and the Why,
 The When and the Wherefore,
 And how the Eternal
 Conceived the Eternal, and therefore
 Beginning began the Beginning;
 They had apprehended
 The ultimate virtue of sinning;
 They had caught the whisper
 That Vega vibrates to Arcturus,
 Piercing the walls
 Of heavy flesh that immure us.

 But if they had known,
 Then had there been no mystery;
 And Life had been poorer,
 And laughter unsurer,
 And the shadow of death securer,
 By lack of this brief history.