Poem: Reflections (Honolulu, 1862)

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: August 30, 1862.

Molders of our Age?-the Iron;

   Men of action, men of thought,

Each mechanic, quick creation

Tells some wonder ye have wrought.

Ever molding, molding, molding,

   Changing all things into new-

Molding while the o'er wrought metal

   Runs the fiery furnace through!

By tour rapid respirations,

   Busy brains and busy hands,

Ye have compassed a dominion

   Over all the seas and lands.

For the power of life is action;

   And ye labor with the sun;

While the men of sloth, who slumber,

   Dream not what your tolls have won.

Blow to blow, the metal hammer-

   Metal-beating hammer showers,

Ere they waken, though its ringing

   Tongues the changes of the hours.

Molders of our Age!-the Iron;

   Whither do your labors tend?

Will they end but in confusion,

   As the Babled Past did end?

There-through all my early summers,

   In that Past, my thoughts are bound;

Habitations vacant, broken;

   Vacant, broken tombs I found.

And along the dim horizon,

   Where the earliest Nights were born,

Ignorance and Error clouded

   All the East, the lights, the morn.

Westward, where for ages flourished 

   A philosophy of fools,

On the broader world's experience

   Rose the pride of other schools.

But in all I found confusion

   Discord, opposition, change;

Old engrafted superstitions,

   Creeds opposed to creeds as strange.

And I said-Not in division-

   Not in fractions, great or small,

Lies the Truth, for which we struggle,

   But in unity of all.

All the atoms of creation,

   All the life, by primal laws

Of dependency, relation,

   Forms a unit of their Cause.

But "the thoughts of men are widened,"

   As the great true-poet sings;

Yet is all our boasted knowledge

   But the surface-show of things.

Though our souls, in their immortal

   Tendencies beyond control,

Thrown on Nature's superficies,

   Struggle toward the Central Soul.

Yet o'er Truth's unsounded ocean,

   Like a vanity we skim;

Delving with our might of reason,

   Lo! we bubble to the brim.

Flows the stream of human knowledge,

   Ever deepening, widening on,

All the truths of all the ages

   Slowly merging into one-

In the Alpha and Omega

   Of all being, the unknown

Source and sum of mind and matter-

   God-the universal-one.

Molders of our Age!-the Iron;

   Let us hope to you 'tis given,

You, to solve the social problem-

   Sages, saints, in vain have striven.

Let us reason, though but darkly,

   That Necessity's great bar

To the ocean-covered navies

   Will arise-your "Monitor!"

That the end of war is vapor;

  Victories a losing gain;

Modern war-a beggared thousand

   For a single hero slain.

Honolulu, August, 1862.   W.S. HUGHSON