 | Vigil and vision |  |
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WORDSWORTH.
1.
IN our loud times thy voice is little heard,Singer of homely things and humbleness;
The roar of trade and strife, the battle's press
Well nigh thy memory from men's thoughts have blurred.
Yet, in life's pauses, like the mellow bird,
That, when the storm hath spent its wailing stress,
Sings in the setting from the wood-recess,
There cometh to our ears thy quiet word;
Thy quiet song, that tells of quiet days
And peaceful nights, with Heaven and Nature spent,
Far from Life's battle and the weary ways,
Where men for sorrow strive and miscontent,
And to our prisoned thought the worlds unbars,
That lie beyond the ether and the stars.
2.
Thy song is like the light of stars and moon,Austere and pale and cold, belike, that show
To the hot blood: to others we must go
For the sheer splendours of the summer-noon,
The joys of May, the mellow nights of June,
When heaven above consenting, earth below,
With wine of rapture drunken, to and fro
Sway to the nightingale's ecstatic tune.
Too soft thou speak'st for youth's imperious ear;
It craves another and a stormier song:
But, when the leaves of life are falling sere,
The shriller songsters strike a note of wrong
For the tired sense, and to thy strain austere
It turns for still content and quiet cheer.
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3.
Thou lov'dst the lowly of this world of ours;The grazing herds, the flocks of sheep or geese,
The sunlight falling on some snowy fleece,
Thou sang'st, the wilder ways, the homelier flowers:
In Nature's less intoxicating hours
Most at thine ease thou wast; the slow increase
Of morning in the East, the quiet cease
Of daylight in the West, the evening showers,
More than the stormful sunset's thunderous towers
Or the sheer splendours of the Summer day
Gladdened thy soul: more than the frontispiece
The book thou lov'dst and from the heavenly powers
Sought'st, for the solace of thy pilgrim way,
The things that make for rapture less than peace.
4.
Thou wast not glad; yet sorry wast thou not;The note of all thy being plain content,
Peace without passion, as without lament,
The golden mean was betwixt cold and hot.
Enough for thee it was to know Life's what;
Its How thou soughtest not nor its intent,
But mad'st, amidst the days that came and went,
Thy heaven in common things and common lot.
For us, whose lips have drained Life's cup of brine,
Thine aim too humble is, thy speech too cold;
Yet, when the thought is purged by life's decline
And good and ill show clear, as we grow old,
We count thy water more than others' wine,
Thy silver more of price than others' gold.
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5.
Others have struck a stronger note than thou,With more ecstatic strains to hopes more high
Our hearts have raised and to the topmost sky
Have drawn our souls up from the worldly slough,
With Pythian songs of Nature's Why and How;
But thou alone hast taught us from things nigh
And common help to seek and to rely,
Not on what may be Then, but what is Now.
So, when all other voices have their soul
Of charm and healing lost, to thee we turn
And from thy word in peace contentment learn
To find and faith in Life's Eternal Whole
And Duty, Past and Present and To-be
Binding in chains of heavenly harmony.
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