University of Virginia Library

Articulate speech is but a coarse-woven sieve
That drops the fine gold through; some subtile chords
Of swift and ravishing music lurk between
The written notes. This only we can tell:
The boy, clear-eyed and beautiful-browed, is led
To a quiet spot arched over by great trees,
And this seal set upon him,—for four years
Sacred from all the tarnishing touch of men;
Shut from the jangling of the brazen bells
That strike the hours of the Present noisily,
He is bid to listen—and along the years
Float up the echoes of the Past, the world's
Birth-songs and marching-music, requiems and prayers.
He learns the languages that we call “dead”
(The only living ones, whose fire still glows
Beneath the ash of every modern tongue),
The scrolls that men have dabbled with heart's blood,
Blotted with tears, are his, to learn that all
Is accident and flying form except the soul.
The outer husk, the crown, the robes, or rags
Signify nothing; Roman, Greek, and Goth,
Ate, slept, and dreamed, and died, like modern men.
The audible word is nothing—if the lips
Prayed Zeus or Allah, Elohim or Lord,
The heart said still the same. He learns to choose
The changeless from the changing, as sole good.
Only the trivial chaff is fanned away,
As Time's broad wings go sweeping over earth.
The futile acquisitions of to-day
Tempt him but little, so the heart grow full
With inner force and outward-burning fire.
No surface buckling-on of glittering facts
His mind would have, but weapons that can make
The sinewy arm to wield them; for the sword
And shield will moulder, but the sinewy arm
Has many a field to fight beyond this earth.