Flower o' the thorn A book of wayside verse: By John Payne |
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VOCES VANAE. |
 | Flower o' the thorn |  |
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VOCES VANAE.
IN this our darkling day,—when men fear nought
So much as light nor will from Error's sleep
Be startled till the Judgment-summons leap
Forth of the trumpet and to reckoning brought,
The world awake to that which it hath wrought,
—Few seek the highest: most, like drowsing sheep,
Drone in fat pastures, far beneath the steep
And stony ways of brain-bewildering thought.
Knowledge they shun, as fearful lest unsweet
Truth prove and stir their dream-deluded sense
To question of Life's whither and its whence.
Like the shorn meadows, in the August heat
That love to lie and fatten, 'tis their one
Desire to steep and starken in the sun.
So much as light nor will from Error's sleep
Be startled till the Judgment-summons leap
Forth of the trumpet and to reckoning brought,
The world awake to that which it hath wrought,
—Few seek the highest: most, like drowsing sheep,
Drone in fat pastures, far beneath the steep
And stony ways of brain-bewildering thought.
Knowledge they shun, as fearful lest unsweet
Truth prove and stir their dream-deluded sense
To question of Life's whither and its whence.
Like the shorn meadows, in the August heat
That love to lie and fatten, 'tis their one
Desire to steep and starken in the sun.
If some beyond Life's passing joy and pain
There be who seek assurance, who discern
And to their kind would teach the things etern,
Their single voices seldom may distrain
The web of dreams that blurs the general brain;
And such as waken at their summons stern,
Muttering, from one side to the other turn,
“Tis not yet morning,” say and sleep again.
—Yet, whiles, from out Thought's mystery-muted sphere,
To those there cometh that have ears to hear
Their speech's echo, like the word of wonder,
That summoned Samuel rise again and be,
Or like the thronging voices of the thunder,
Reverberate volleying o'er the sounding sea.
There be who seek assurance, who discern
And to their kind would teach the things etern,
Their single voices seldom may distrain
The web of dreams that blurs the general brain;
And such as waken at their summons stern,
Muttering, from one side to the other turn,
“Tis not yet morning,” say and sleep again.
—Yet, whiles, from out Thought's mystery-muted sphere,
To those there cometh that have ears to hear
Their speech's echo, like the word of wonder,
That summoned Samuel rise again and be,
Or like the thronging voices of the thunder,
Reverberate volleying o'er the sounding sea.
| Flower o' the thorn | |