XII. THE PAST.
Benedicite, noctes et diei, Domino.
O Time, thou creature strange,
Subtler than air,
Who all things dost pervade,
All things dost change,
And of the whole a record dost preserve,
Thyself unseen the while!
Lo, as from out the depths
Of some far eastern Archipelago
Uprises firm,
By toiling instinct raised
Of million million insects unobserved,
The curious structure of some coral-isle;—
So thou, O Time,
From out eternal deeps
A wondrous world hast wrought,
The fabric slow
Of million million moments unperceived;
For every moment lived its tiny life,
Then solitary died,
And dying, left behind
Its fragment of the past;
Till upward, lo,
Emerging from th' abyss an isle appears,
Which, shooting transverse forth,
Is into grots and lengthening avenues
Of mystic cloisters grown.
Halls of the dead!
Halls of the Past and Gone!
Long corridors of years
Mantling the bosom of eternity!
Wherein we wander on at will,
Led by historic muse along,
And wonder at thy matchless skill,
Patient heart, and labour long;
Who o'er the level of th' eternal tide
Hast spread a labyrinth so vast and wide;
And built it up in such a wondrous way,
Working from age to age by night and day;
Nor built alone; but storied every wall
With all that did from age to age befall.
O registries sublime!
O records of all time!
What things untold
Of new and old
Have on your silent tablets been enroll'd!
O dim archives of vanish'd nights and days,
What thoughts ye raise
In those who wander your lone aisles along!
A twilight scene
O'ergrown with ivy green,
Where scarce a trembling ray can shoot between,
Fit place for my sad song,
For I would sing
Of every earthly thing,
How speedily it fleeteth to its close;
How all our hopes and fears,
Our smiles and tears,
Thoughts, words, and deeds,
With all that thence proceeds,
And all that thither flows,
In thee converge at last
O solemn Past!
Borne in a ceaseless flux which none may stay,
And so remain,
For glory or for bane,
Irrevocably stamp'd until the Judgment Day!
