Where the safe ways end

Some months back I ended one of my blogs with the closing stanza from a poem I bring out from time to time, usually to describe the mystery, the unchanging nature and the fierce faithfulness  of the God we cling to when the night gets dark and the going rough. For many years I only had the last stanza and the name of the writer – Horace Shipp. I asked in an earlier blog for help accessing the whole poem, when I didn’t even know its title. My son came to my rescue, sending me a birthday gift in the form of the book entitled Palimpsest. (An old word from Ancient Greek  meaning something overwritten; beautifully illustrated in the first poem of the same title.)

Someone wrote in and asked if I’d write out the whole poem. Here it is; let it bless you, strengthen and encourage you, as it does me. Now I shall read the other poems; I think I shall find plenty of gold and much else to reflect upon.

EVEREST – To all who explore new paths

What went you forth to find? What new thing would you know?

What secret read in the Mother of Mountain’s blind,

Blind eyes? What learn at her barren bosom of snow?

For what new thing should we so strive, so agonise?

Is there some wonder in the remoteness beyond our ken?

Some beauty: some wisdom beyond the dream of the wise?

Nay, not for that we strove, Nor any new thing found:

But this truth, ancient and everlasting, did we prove,

This beauty, this wisdom, on the high untrodden ground;

That where the safe ways end, Known and unknown divide,

God’s great uncharted passes upward tend,

And the spirit of man undaunted is undenied;

And beyond the last camp-fire man has Faith for friend,

And beyond all guidance, the courage of God for guide.