University of Virginia Library

1

Sun, moon and stars—inviolate firmament—
Phases of earth's inveterate alchemy
Of life and death—profound tranquillities,
Thunders and trepidations of the sea—
How often have you been to man in spirit
A liberation and an ecstasy!
How often has the soul gone forth with you,
As, with the tide, a stranded caravel
Issues by noble estuaries, impelled
By streaming winds and led by the low sun,
Into the light, into the infinite spaces! ...
How often has the majesty and silence
Of starlight, or the clear crying of birds
At dawn, or the vast violet skies of evening,
Befriended us with spacious influences,
Composed the mind in quiet exaltation,
And, thro' the shining fabric of the soul's
Inconstant vision of eternal things,
Strained and refined the clouded wine of life!
How often has the sound and spectacle
And splendour of the universal being
Affected and admonished us to know
In all the common ways and days of life
The immanence of spiritual rapture;
And given us liberty at last to learn
What correspondence and complicities
Involve the soul with sun and moon and stars,
With sky and earth and sea and countless forms,
Passions and appetites and dissolutions,
Powers and faiths and pregnancies of life!

2

We have laid down our ear to the dumb sod—
We who are man and mortal as all things,
And more and yet not otherwise than they—
We have laid down our ear and heard the earth
Of graves and the innumerable grass
Whisper to us ... and we have heard the sea,
Delicate and enormous, shout aloud
And murmur in the midnight and the moonrise
Vastly and with a tired and tragic voice. ...
And we have heard the sunrise singing like
A lyre of gold, and clear and faint and far,
Star-choirs in the cosmic atmospheres! ...
And, hearing, we have caught out of the one
Immeasurable voice from every hand
Our own soul's secret,—we have felt, when all
Our whole life's strength seemed one, and all our heart
Was of one ecstasy, within ourselves
These diverse voices blent into one tone
Of the one Truth, one phrase of the one Song
Everywhere singing for our audience! ...
Yea, and of all this music of all things,
Surely we too, hearing, and very fain
Of the full import, which is ours, may yet
At last, at least—if nothing more—discern
How much and ever and all in all the soul
Is everywhere for everyone of us
Immediate and importunate!—how much,
In the pure purpose of the heart, the proud
Desire of the indomitable mind,—
Tho' the shrill chatter of our wasting lives
Leaves us at last weak love and spent resolve—
The truth is arduous and discoverable!—
And O how much on every hand, how much,
When the rare hour of sight and insight comes,—
Tho' it reveal to us how we are not
At best empowered and daring for great deeds,—
The broadcast very light of liberation
Flares in the narrow vistas of our vision,
Shines in the windows of our prison-house,
Flushed and persuasive and unquenchable! ...
O let us hear and see and feel and know
That nature, which is ours, that even we,
We too, whose lives have left their utmost strength
Unused,—we too, who have not truly known
Nor arduously doubted, but instead
Basely believed what seemed and was not true,
May yet, at last, for the soul's sake, discern
How all the meaning and the mystery
Go hand in hand and commonly along
The thronged and trampled avenues of life
And death,—how always and how much,
Whether in nature's elemental being,
Whether in labours of the lonely mind,
Whether in love fulfilled, or life's gross toil
And long-deferred perfection, by the soul
We are invaded and possessed and graced!
O let us, to the body and blood of life,
And to the heart and soul of what we are,
So animate and kindle that at last,
Welcomed, restored, reminded to ourselves,
We too may seem to pass beyond the veil,
Threadbare with light,—beyond the place of passions,
And, on the threshold of the Sanctuary,
Hear the last questions answered in the silence! ...

3

Yet, in that very moment when we dream
Of the soul's inmost self as one fulfilled,
Full well we know the end is not,—nor is there
Ever an end more absolute than now!
There is a strength and solitude within us
That will not let us rest! ... and well we know
That freshly and forever they shall return,
The unanswered question and the pregnant doubt;
And we, have we the passion and the power,
We shall emerge from where we entered in,
Deeming the goal was near, and pass beyond—
There to discern perfections unachieved,
There to reanimate to truths unknown
And liberties we dare not specify! ...
Had we the strength!—Have we perhaps the strength,
Who have all else beside? Are we not men?
Is not the Universe our dwelling-place?
And therefore perfectly in truth for us
Is not the utmost wholly possible? ...
O, with the baffled and the resolute
Vanguard of liberal humanity,—
O to so purge our lives of the mild hours,
Our hearts of humble longings and meek hopes,
Our minds of customs and credulities,
That we may find the days wholly fulfilled
And lightened of the Spirit—all the days
And all things and ourselves, rich and revealed
In the majestic meanings and the might
And passion and pure purpose of the soul! ...
O to be with Them—with their lives who lived
In truth, and with their hearts which knew no ease,
And with their souls which could not be denied! ...
O to be with Them!—Let us be with Them!
Yea, we are more sufficient than we seem,
We who stand out in the forefront of time,
Last of the living generations, set
With sleepless eyes on the last verge of thought. ...
For we alone, bravely and all in all,
We have usurped God's ancient heritage:
And where He died we hear a single voice
Of one who wakes into the world's dominion—
Our own voice singing where His choirs are mute:
A voice of challenge and of celebration;
A voice of love, puissant and serene;
A voice that rings up the long road, and breaks,
Where the Night closes like a dead man's lips,
The inert, dark, dreadful taciturnities. ...
A voice which the sad silence of spent things
Out of the Past,—which all the harsh and high
Clamour of life's huge process in the world,
Threatens, it may be, but shall not subdue
In anyone of all the least of us,
If we but rouse in our whole living strength,
As Jesus, once, and Socrates, to dare
And live and doubt and die for the sole Truth! ...