University of Virginia Library

III.

FIRST CHORUS.
Where is the poison and the blight, my friends,
That rose with evil incense to the stars?
Where the destroying worm, that in the rose
Made beauty but the emblem of decay?
Where the strong limbs of ravenous beasts, whose life
Was by destruction nurtured? where the storm
That triumphed through the air with winged clouds,
And blinding lightening, under whose strong hand
The mariner went down; the deadened waste
Of winter, and the houseless traveller,
Where are they? where the iron and the brass—
The countless fabrications of all crafts,
Wearing the human tools unto the dust,
Raising strange wants and adventitious life,
And misery made a guest in every home:
All things deforming, thwarting, beneath which
Humanity was an o'erlabored steer,
A suffering—where are they? for no more
They press upon us: who hath wrought the change?
Say, friends, Oh say.

ANSWERING CHORUS.
Who? who but He hath wrought the change, the man,
The laborer himself; for by the law
Of the Infinite, change there can be none
But from within,—evolved, not altered,—born,
Not superadded. He who hath gone round
His habitation as the sun goes round;
Who hath left nought unknown, but heaven and earth
Measured and analyzed,—the ways of God
Everywhere finding, the entangled web
Of mixed and broken forces, heretofore
Antagonists, unravelling; end to end
Linking the chain anew; those evil things
Which bear not towards a better, going down
Into the void and unimagined past.
Thus hath he hushed the moaning voice of pain,
The cycle of his labors thus fulfilled.
He, he alone.

FIRST CHORUS.
The bow, the spear, the sword, the shield,
That late were borne as symbols by the strong,
Once more than symbols—as the echoed songs
From poets of the past inform us still;
Poets with burning souls and hopes of fame,
Drunk with precipitate joys; the hopelessness
That had no future; pride unto itself
All things, in purple and in gilded pomp,
Rejoicing in the bitterness of envy:
All the sad tears that on the fairest face
Of love so wore the furrows,—all the fear
That made man, men; and each to each a friend
Or foe or slave: the self-aggrandizement,
And deep self sacrifice for vain command—
Where are they all, those madnesses of heart?
Or who hath charmed the angel peace, to come
Even into the bosoms of all souls,
Making our lives impassive happiness—
Even immortal?

ANSWERING CHORUS.
From whom hath come this harmony? from him
The sufferer himself, for by the law
Of the Infinite, change there can be none
But from within. Oh, from the earliest hour
Hath it not been towards this his sufferings bore,
Towards this his prayers ascended, and for this,
Patience, the child of weariness, from house
To house the words of comfort whispered still?
Behold her wanderings ended, she becomes
The angel of sweet peace for evermore.
For now the mission of the Holy Child
Hath been confirmed by instinct, since the curse
By which the body was condemned to toil,
Even unto death, hath been redeemed, and man
Emerging shall be yet again divine;
He hath uncrowned the passions, and transformed
Earth into heaven.

FIRST CHORUS.
The oracle, the spectre, and the sign,
Of influence mysterious; all the rites
Of the anointed, and the sweet resolve
Of the disconsolate to be made glad,
When the full heart o'erflowed by children's graves:
The strange analogies by which kind hope
Embalmed mortality, the honey and myrrh,
For the poor wounded life: the avenging gulf
Of Hades: where are they? nor hear we now
The multitude of disputants, each one,
Faithless to the divinity within,
Filling the ear with words by which to clothe
The goddess Truth, and o'er her nakedness,
Terrible in its beauty, to prevail:
Filling the mind with words by which to fix
The spirit, not then from vile bonds released.
Melodious voices hear we now alone,
Throughout the conscious air: whose tuneful tongue
Hath done this, friends, oh, say?

ANSWERING CHORUS.
His, even his, whose words so falsely strove
As ye have said—who symbol raised and sign,
When better could not be; for every time
Hath had its work, and relatively true
Was its voice heard—yea, oft in symbol dark
Was the unspeakable shadowed, and the realm
Of the unlimited verity approached.
He, sure it was, who slept by Ganges wave
Contemplative, with fables manifold
And images unshapely: he who came
Successively, avatar and new god:
He who, with logic's tools and Attic grace,
Contended for the empire of the mind,
Hence rising to the permanent: he who,
In tribulation and much suffering, found
In faith, that affirmation of the soul,
Redemption from the uncertain, and at last
Felt as he longed to be: he who sojourned
So long with knowledge, that the hand and eye
Resumed their ancient sovereignty o'er all,
Vast regions of sensation new explored,—
A consciousness interior and removed—
And in divinest instinct lived at last.

ALL.
Awake ye echoes from the hills and woods;
Awake ye murmurs from the seas and winds,
Not now with tyrannous voices, but attuned
And fixed in harmony with regular pause:
Open the hymn unto this spiritual power
By which ye are.

LYREMMOS.
Now at last I reach my home:
Now again those multitudes
Of beautiful forms behold.
And the great leaves of life's vast tree
Cover all the heaven.
As a traveller at eve,
I journeyed to the dusky East,
But I have met the morning's light!
Although the shades were dark, although
The stars were dim and intermixed
With vapour, and the sickly moon
Was chill, as is a bleachéd corse
By the salt foam of the sea;
And the owl with croak obscure
Greeted me upon the wold,
And the beetle blindly smote me,
In the darkness, on the face.
Now I meet the morning light!
And the circle is complete!
But where is she I left of old
In Eden; she whose memory
Hath drawn me on; she who unseen
Sends these glorious ones to greet
My steps to boyhood's nooks returned:
For now it seems as if my search
Had been a search for her alone,
Now it seems as if the while,
With weary feet throughout the dark
I strayed, her voice had been my guide:
And that I now remember all
The words and songs wherewith she strove
To wake me from my fever-sleep—
To guide me into this, her heaven.

ECHOES.
Sisterhood! let him behold
Mneme; whom with sheltering arms
We have clustered round so long:
Lyremmos! Energy! behold
The white flower, Peace, thy sister, brings:
Behold her now descend, she bends
Her radiant face to thine.