Flame-encircled orb of day, eye-defying glitter–
I watched you start your daily way amid a clouded litter;
I saw you push the mists aside, and tear the clouds asunder–
But something more abstract than all this brought me up in wonder:
We know so little of you there; science leaves you still a mystery:
Ten times ten thousand gaps for us exist throughout your history.
We do not understand you, then; we cannot quite explain you–
Yet we question not the blessings there so freely on your menu.
Our lives would most abruptly end if you one day should leave us;
Of vital heat, the food we eat, your going would relieve us;
From early dawn til twilight time our lives are daily lighted,
Our troubles by your warming rays are deftly, swiftly blighted.
From frightful cold of outer space your steady pulse defends us;
The cheerful bird, and flower of June your summer vigil sends us,
‘Twould seem a little puerile with these facts that fair surround us
To let a lot of doubt and fear about your WHY confound us.
Then, why doubt God, who too looks down beyond the sun there flying,
Whom also we can’t analyze, though some are vainly trying,
Without Whose help we find us stopped before we’re fairly started;
Faith in Whom can make our path mapped and clearly charted?
To Whom for more than light and heat and food and drink we’re looking,
Whose Smile for you and your neighbor too, Hell’s grim abyss is brooking?
You, sun, are just the same to God as infant is to Mother:
0 what a shame that man can take the one and leave the Other!
by Ray Romine Monday, July 20, 1942