Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

Gods of the days to be,
Swift be the faring of your shining feet!
Why tarry ye?
The world is weary of the Gods effete,
Whose shadows linger on Olympus seat.
O'er lands and skies and seas
No spirit hovers, such as heretofore
Spoke in each wave-beat on the moaning shore,
Each shadow on the meadows and the wheat,
Each murmurous rill, each windwaft in the trees.

Christs of the coming times,
Where do ye linger in the distance dim?
Long but a memory,
A rose of old romance, in fable-climes
Flowered out and faded into fading rhymes,
Remembrance is of Him,
The shadow-God of stony Galilee,
Whose shadow-life upon the shadow-tree,
Faint through the ages 'gainst the horizon's rim,
A shadow-death to deity sublimes.

Long of the olden Gods
Men's minds are empty, as the heavens are bare.
Yonder, in the blank of blue,
Jove hath long ceased to wield the thunder's rods:
From the void heavens no more Jehovah nods
Nor Allah from the air
Reluctant smiles on those to Him that sue:

288

No Thunderer volleys at the recreant crew
Nor with the lightnings smites them to the clods:
No incense climbs the high coerulean stair;
No altars smoke with sacrifice and prayer.

All tarries, low and high,
For that which is to come. The air is great
With presages of fast-approaching Fate.
Surely the times are nigh,
The foreappointed times for which we wait,
With eyes uplifted to the lowering sky.
The sun in Heaven's gate
Grows pale and cold for lack of deity:
Men's hearts are sick of hope; the hour is late;
With age light saddens over land and sea
And still there come no Gods to gladden me.

II.

I know not what ye are,
Who tarry yet beyond the topmost star,
The Future in your hands to make or mar.

What Joves for us you hold,
What Phoebus with the bow and lyre of gold,
What Dians diademed with moonbeams cold,

What Cytherea waits
To light our lives behind the Morning's gates,
What Loves to laugh to scorn the frowning Fates,

I know not, nor your heaven,
Whether you number by the Baalim Seven,
The Æsir Twelve or by the Brahms Eleven.

This only, this I know,
You shall be no mere Gods of wail and woe,
No cross-bound weaklings, such as oversow

289

The labouring fields of Life
With harvest-centuries of hate and strife
And strew behind them sorrow ever-rife

And hope that faileth still,
That all the ways of thought with fear fulfil
And leave Life fenceless 'gainst the usurping Will.

Nor shall you be of those
Who give folk helpless to a host of foes
And future pleasance pledge for present woes,

Who promise men a mock
Of Heaven to come with Hell on earth to unlock;
No apers of Prometheus on his rock,

Without the saving fire
Th'immortal Titan stole from Jove his sire,
To light the darkling world for Life's desire.

You shall be none of these.
Where they have wrought us sorrow, you shall ease,
Strengthening the bent backs and the feeble knees.

Gods shall you be of joy,
Led by some radiant Dionysiac boy
To solve the world of sorrow and annoy.

Where those that went before
Of sin and sufferance and atonement sore
Told and of soul and body still at war,

You shall of life and light,
Of grace and gladness speak in the sun's sight,
Shall lead the morning through the halls of Night.

290

Your presage life foresaith,
No making ready for swift-coming death,
But joy new-drawn with each recurrent breath.

Forth of the Past-time's gloom
Your world, delivered from the shadow of doom,
Its head shall like a lily lift and bloom.

Love over all shall reign,
New earth, new heavens, new-purged of sorrow's stain,
And Peace return to dwell with men again.

Yea, yours shall be the time
Of Life new-blossomed in a golden clime,
Washed and made white of all the ages' slime,
Soul's hunger quenched and body grown sublime!

Would I might see it, I!
Would Heaven I might its coming but aby,
But live to look upon its face and die!

Ah, would to God! But, nay;
I share the old world's curse and must away
With it to night, before the coming day.