 | The Finding of The Book and Other Poems |  |
II
Nor let there wantAught of a human pathos for the chant.
The heart is long in breaking,
The eye is long in weeping,
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Never a flag is flying,
Never a pulse is leaping,
Never a sailor waking,
Never a moving hand
Within that dreadful land.
His sail is frozen to the mast.
He waits the world out aye in the glory white and vast.
The woman's heart at home is slow in breaking,
The woman's hair from day to day
Is slow in fading into gray.
Long, but at last the hope is dead;
Slow, but at last the last year comes for taking
The latest thin and silver thread.
Wherefore as ages come and go,
Lest other chronicles be lost
In that interminable frost,
In that eternal snow,
Strike, strike the golden lyre!
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