Schweitzer's Creed

The doctor would have smiled, I think,
in reverie off Lambarene's shores,
to field a posthumous dream--
to learn dry atoms' call to other worlds
can reach and penetrate those alien shells
with marching cadences.
How so like Blake!...who found his universe
within a grain of sand,
for science stops in awe where life begins--
for it begins forever.

 

Small boats and yes, quixotic ideologies
will never let us be; old lives give way
as sandbars to the river;  the old doctor
takes his bow, steps into history
and smiling still, bequeaths
a still more monstrous God of life
where even Alpha and Omega yield
to immortality.

        ~

 

Reviews

[Girl Friday (Sarah W.)]

The fact that you used the word "quixotic" got me! I know a little about Schweitzer, but not enough to form a complete opinion. This was an interesting read in that it had very tangible elements blended with some slightly metaphysical ones. Great juxtapositions. I love the imagery of the boats, river, sandbars...water is a great way to bring together ideas. Well done!

[Dean]

For me, both Doctors Schwietzer and King were the two greatest men of the 20th Century,

I'm sure you know it was a boat on the river where Schweitzer conceived a tangible fixing of his cornerstone philosophy, Reverence for Life.

[Dean]

and it was our ideology that is quixotic--not Schweitzer's!

[Marie]

Schweitzer was behind his time in some ways, ahead of it in others.

[Dean]

Yes, I think so, but he chose it consciously. Read "Out of My Life and Thought"