THE VOICE OF THE HIGHT
I
Of a dream I would sing and a river I saw in a dream—
Of souls that the river divided, so wide was the stream,
So wide and so deep that neither the other beheld.
And they gazed on the ocean near, by terror compelled—
On the infinite ocean whither their barks had been hurled
In a tempest that drove from the ultimate, unseen world.
By that ocean they stood in awe, and remembrance, and wonder;
Troubled their hearts with the ceaseless surge and the thunder—
Till in fear they turned, and they gazed on the inland hight,
And the mountains that called by day and beckoned by night,
And, each to the other unknown, by that call was shaken:
O, lost is the soul that the voice of the hight shall not waken,
Nor heavenward climb by the paths high hearts have taken.
II
Inland the new souls urged, by river and marsh,
Treading with stedfast feet the roadways harsh.
Inland and up through fields of flower or thorn,
Through forests rude, and through desert ways forlorn—
Upward and on by meadows blossoming bright
Or where, under pestilent breath, the earth was blight;
Onward and up—and still by the river's brink
Where, nigh unto death, they lived by the living drink.
III
And now, behold, they nearer and nearer drew
Till each pilgrim soul the other beheld and knew,
And climbing thus ever higher, they came more nigh,
Above the enfolding mists, 'neath the bending sky—
Till at last at the river's source, near the mountain's crest,
At the selfsame spring they drank, and the waters of rest;
For they followed the paths high hearts have climbed to the sun,
And the souls that the river divided became as one.
