Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

A voice, in a dream,
At the noon of the winter night I heard,
When the world was agleam
With the wildering white
Of the moon
And never a bird
On the wing
Or a thing
There was to be seen
In the night,
But the sheen
Of the pale phantasmal light
On the shimmering snow.
A silence there was as of death,
And nothing, no voice and no breath,
There stirred,
Save the crack of the frost-taken trees
And the ebb and the flow
Of the fluttering breeze,
As it eddied and erred
To and fro
On the face of the wold,
In the track of the conquering cold.
No sign and no sound
On the glimmering ground,
No stir in the wide-woven haze
Of the moon-mist, the world-all that wound
In the weft of its argent rays,
No pipe of a passer-by,
No fall of a foot on the ways,
No song of a bird in the sky.

It spoke of the things which were
And the things which are to be;

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It told of the thickening air
And the mists of sorrow and care,
That gathered o'er land and sea;
It spoke of the world's despair
And the gloom that, day by day,
The face of the heavens o'ergrew,
Straitening the steadfast blue;
It murmured of life grown grey
And darkened with doubt and strife,
Of thought fear-fettered and song that goes,
Fighting its way through a host of foes,
Seeking a sunnier clime:
And shrill as the wail of the wind it rose,
As it told
Of the fast-coming time,
The time when the world shall have fallen old
And the peoples, cumbered with care and gold,
No heaven left them tow'rd which to climb,
Shall wallow, unholpen, in night and cold
And find no foster, no hand to hold,
No saviour to further them forth of the slime.

“Yet, yet is it time,” it said:
“Yet, yet may the curse be awried;
Yet, yet may the folk, if they turn aside
From the track that tends to the pit of hell
And the path of the place of dread,
Yet, yet may they see the morning tide
And the world awake from the dead.
Yet, yet, if they wend from the wildering quest
Of shame successful and gain undue,
Base strife forswearing and greed unblest,
Unfruitful vantage and vain increase,
And turn them again to the Fair and the True,
Content hereafter with love and peace,
Reborn shall Life be and bloom anew:
The world shall be quit of curst unrest,

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Of riches and poverty:
No more shall the folk from East to West,
The rich and the poor, the strong and the weak,
For void and vanity still contest
And strive by land and sea.
No need thenceforward for Heaven to seek
Past the towering clouds and the mountain-peak;
For Heaven on earth will be.”