XLV
THE SECOND GOSPEL
Undeclared
Wisdom with its trumpet word
In a myriad volumes heard;
All which unto love belongs
Chanted in uncounted songs,
Up and down the endless ages;
Things divine in sacred pages—
As the sands of the seashore—
Taught with tongues of gold of yore:
When to-morrow is to-day,
What can still remain to say?
One thing look'd for—one unheard;
Only that unutter'd word,
Echoes of the sense of which
All our spoken words enrich,
And shall yet, with clarion call,
Alter and transmute them all.
It is for this reason that literature is itself a mystery,
operated by the convention of instituted rites.
