"'Tis the first and lower part of the city," began his ethereal guide.
"You would designate it ant hill,
Yet 'twas built with forethought and with purpose,
Not for pride.
"And nothing that man could envisage
could match the intricate construction
Of the tiny halls inside."
Then the stranger, by some form of magic,
Made it possible for Jones to look
Inside the mound, beneath the ground,
Where hundreds of chambers and nooks were astutely designed
And then intertwined by the hallways of access
Their frequenters took.
There are throughways for supply transportation
And byways to nurseries for the young,
Escape avenues designed to be used if the city
Should be overrun.
And each thoroughfare, with meticulous care,
Is maintained by the workers when done.
Nothing was built to serve pleasure,
No energy wasted on pomp;
No ostentation, no silly oblation
For the deities of artistry to stomp.
Survival and welfare stand prominent.
No space is wasted for romp.
And yet, the results of their toil
Would please the architect's eye.
For everything built serves a purpose,
And in purpose a beauty doth lie;
A beauty inherent, though seldom apparent to the mundane passer-by.
"You will note they strive in harmony," quoth the angel,
"And with infinitesimal brain, they labor
On a vast metropolis that,
With ease,
Puts mankind's best Efforts to shame.
Study it well, Nehemiah,
And consider, and compare it with your own meager domain."
"Trash!" Yelled Jones, with sanguine face.
"Pure trash! Bunk and balderdash!"
Then he shrieked again, "'Tis an insect's den!",
With a voice both irate and brash.
But he glanced once more through the tiny door
Before stomping away through the grass.
"Now come with me," the angel spoke, "and we shall view,
Before we retire from this place,
A much larger mound,
Tall as a man,
Even higher."
And he led Nehemiah across the field
To a colossal earthen spire.
"This, Nehemiah, is but another marvel
Of the metropolis that dwarfs your own.
"'Tis a termite mound, a city in itself,
Built while the great winds have blown
Your man-made mockeries back into dust,
And laid your great monuments prone.
Study it closely, inspect it slowly,
And consider the fact, mister Jones,
That nowhere within this architectural wonder will you find
One solitary stone.
'Tis constructed with substance that lends it adhesion
That man has never known."
"You see, Mister Jones,
Mankind must take from without what his structures require.
But the builders herein produce from within
The substance which molds this great spire.
Yet, no time was spent to research or invent,
'Twas given, not born of desire.
The colossus was formed through knowledge innate,
Not from years of studious pain.
The builders have squandered no time in pondering,
Or trying to rely on the brain,
But merely undertake to create and use
Of that which was freely obtained.
A man could not hope, in the limited scope of a lifetime,
To learn to apply even one tiny fraction
Of the principles in action
When these little laborers ply
The skills they possess, and with total success,
Achieve perfection a man would not try."
This time there arose no cry from Nehemiah,
But he stared with a vexed expression,
And an envious twinge tickled his bones,
(Just a touch of a jealous infection).
But the redoubts of his mind were stubbornly inclined
To relinquish no sign of impression.
"After all," he reasoned within,
"They're just random, makeshift dunes.
There's no careful planning, no study of stress
Or alignment of doorways and rooms.
Though, admittedly, the structures serve purpose and need,
They flaunt no stately festoons.
They possess no beauty, no loveliness of line
That results from the tedious hours
And pains of perfection that must be suffered
To adorn man's prodigious towers."
And here, his thought-filled train was derailed
As the stranger drew eye to the flowers.
"These are the asterisks used by the power
Whose existence you stubbornly deny,
To punctuate places of beauty on earth
That would tend to elude the eye
And thus give cause for ineffable pause
To delight the passer-by.
Lock a lingering look on these petals my friend,
And concentrate on recollection of any great thing
You've built or you've seen
That matches the brilliant reflection of coruscating hues
Through the prisms of dew
When the sunbeams display their affection."
But Jones could not find, in the halls of his mind,
One memorable thing that he'd seen;
No marvel of men that could even begin duplication
Of the radiant scene
That gilded the fields and brightened the hills
And speckled the valleys between.
"If it's beauty you seek, it's here at your feet,
And it covers the land over all.
And it springs from the earth in a miracle of birth
That answers the season's call.
These, with the grass, form great carpets
That mankind could never install.
They are constructed," the angel continued,
"And do not, as you believe, spring from space.
Each fiber
Within each delicate stem
Was intentionally set in particular place
And interwoven with infinite care to provide
Both style and grace."
Again, Nehemiah lent wings to his eyes
And scanned the Beautiful scene.
And he could not contend that the frail arts of men
Could mimic the hues 'mid the green.
And to carpet a city, rather than pave,
Was an insurmountable Thing.
"And now, come with me to yon hollow tree,
A structure which has survived two thousand years."
And he led him near, and once they had arrived,
With a tilt of his head, the stranger led Nehemiah's eye
To a honey bee hive.
"Now gaze within, you worshipper of men,
And feast your arrogant eyes on a masterpiece of symmetry."
And, to Jones' dismay and surprise,
He arrived at a precipice of truth,
And his pomposity began its demise.
He peered with astonished amazement at the thousands
Of intricate lines
That intersected, with minute precision,
And formed to perfection,
Repetitive, angular designs.
"All these were constructed," the angel asserted,
"In the space of a season's time."
"How can it be," mused Nehemiah, "that creatures devoid
Of a highly developed brain
Could devise this equiangular edifice,
This symmetrical domain,
And defy the science and knowledge of man
And put his great works to shame?
But the truth is still the truth,
And therefore, I cannot decline to acknowledge
The immanence of an intangible fact:
In the depths of their acts is entwined
Somehow, somewhere, an elusive force that endows them
With singleness of mind."
"It cannot be," in his mind thought he, "that creatures so Tiny as these
Could formulate, much less create, without help,
Such a thing with complex expertise."
Then he turned to his guide with a feeling inside
Of respect, and sank to his knees.
"And now, Nehemiah, we must traverse the sky
Once more 'ere my work is through."
And thus saying, the stranger gestured once more,
And again, Nehemiah Jones flew like an Eagle awing
'Till his feet felt the cling of soft earth
Again 'neath his shoes.
In a valley they stood, in the midst of a wood populated
By gigantic trees.
"'Tis the great sequoia, whose battered cortex
Has weathered the eons with ease;
Whose towering heights are home and delight
For the birds, the animals and bees."
With consternation, Nehemiah's eyes embraced
The awesome scene.
And his diminution increased as his ego began
To careen through a violently rushing torrent of spillage
From a broken dam
Of self esteem!
"The size is the thing," the angel erupted,
"The huge, Gargantuan size!
Engulf if you can, you minuscule man, Just one,
In the scope of your eyes."
But to look upon one could not be done,
But by sections,
Nehemiah surmised.
"So, Mister Jones, have you ever beheld
A towering spire such as this
That was built without stone or mortar or bone,
Yet brushes the heavenly mist
And prevails against blend of wild storm and wind,
And all the great elements resists?
The problem, my friend, with the cities of men
Is the fact that they cannot grow—
Cannot reproduce what's destroyed by abuse
From the heat and the rains and the snow.
And the miraculous thing, I shall now bring
To your attention before we go.
The materials required by the builder,
This tremendous colossus to form,
Need not be hauled in by ten thousand men
Who would toil 'til weary and worn.
All that it needs is in one tiny seed
Akin to a kernel of corn."
"And now, before we depart, Nehemiah, let us briefly epitomize
Concerning this beautiful city and its vast,
Incalculable size,
And touch upon the things you've seen
And the things you've realized.
All you behold is constructed
with particular purpose and call,
For nothing exists without reason,
And each is important to all.
From beneath the turf to above the earth,
In this city, nothing is small.
The city's floor is carpeted, and the peaks of its spires
Enwreathed.
It has existed from earth's beginning
When the first breath of life was breathed.
And, unlike the cities of man, it will,
Till the sword of time is sheathed."
With this last word, a hush occurred,
And a heavenly breeze wafted by
Which separated human from the divine
And whisked him back on high,
Till at last he stood where at first he'd stood
'Ere the angel ventured by.
Yes, true enough, 'twas his favorite bluff
Overlooking that built by his hand.
But the luster was gone from the white, polished stone,
And the towers didn't stand quite as tall.
And the great city wall no longer dignified the land.
It stood as a blot, and marred the spot
That had once been beautifully flowered.
And he realized, as he fixed his eyes on the awesome,
Ivory towers,
That the land he observed would have been better served
By planting more beautiful bowers.
No usefulness lay where the mortar and clay
Joined the sculpted stone.
No function was served by the delicate curves
Interlacing the marble and bone.
In a few meager years it would all disappear,
This glory of man would be gone.
Then he turned on his heels
And looked over the fields and valleys
Across the lands,
And then to the ground, at a miniature mound,
And he knew that omnipotent hands had fashioned it all,
The huge and the small,
Where the "Greatest City" stands.
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