 | Vigil and vision |  |
LUCUS DEORUM.
1
TO those who live, as I have lived, alone,With birds and music mated, books and flowers,
By their own heart-beats all the changing hours,
Rain and shine, measuring, strange things are shown;
Their ears to many an other-worldly tone
Resound, and touched by the supernal powers,
Their eyes o'erlook this shadow-world of ours
Into the spheres beyond, the ways unknown:
Their hopes possess another world than this
Dull orb of day and night; in wake and dream,
Their hands lay hold on the Invisible;
Thought wings with them the ultimate abyss,
That lies to thitherward the icy stream,
And opens Heaven to their gaze and Hell.
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2
Yet more of Heaven than Hell, to Love the praise!Their dreams: though by the inexorable Fates,
Unfriended, lacking of their spirit's mates,
Foredoomed to fare this round of nights and days,
The yearning in their souls, from dull dismays
Of common lusts removed and common hates,
Hath drawn Love down from utter Heaven's gates,
To walk with them the weary worldly ways.
So, in his hand, across Life's sorry stage
They pass, unspotted of the paltry age,
And by his guidance, for their spirits' food
Seeking the fair, the wise, the true, the good,
Dwell, with the souls of hero, prophet, sage,
In a Gods' grove of sacred solitude.
| Vigil and vision | |