Matin Bells and Scarlet and Gold :: :: University of Virginia Library

There was silence in the city, there was silence on the lea
When that fateful voice went forth
Through the night, into the north,
And the leaves that made a music like the murmur of the sea,
As in sounds of solemn worth
Rode the White Wings on the stillness that responded to their plea;
For that vision
With decision
Cut the vapours, as they hung
Like a curtain
In uncertain
Light, and as a censer swung;
And the oaring of those White Wings was a wonder to the eye,

While they voyaged grandly on
As of old in Babylon,
With a message for the earth life, and a mission from the sky,
That reached out into the future, and reached back across the past,
Calling man of peace and slayer
From their slothful dreams to prayer
And the holy preparations of the vigil and the fast—
“O ye sinners who transgress,
Come to penance and confess,
And your evil deeds redress,
While the door of grace is open and the hours of mercy last.”

And beneath the ancient belfry in the shadow of the tower,
With the magic of the moon
And its candle, that would soon
Be extinguished by the sun-blaze as it burst again in flower,
Death was waiting for its boon
And a quiet resurrection when the White Wings gave it power;
For the mortal
From its portal
Then once more in beauty broke,
And the sleeping
Graces keeping
Their long trysting-time awoke;
As they heard that cry of ages, in their centuried retreat
And their fellowship with dust,
Which aroused the quickening trust
And the seed of everlastingness that could not own defeat;
While it robbed the grave of victory, and took from fear the sting,
Calling through the earthly layer,
“O ye corpses, come to prayer,

For your trance is but a trouble that will final glory bring
To the darkness of the clods,
And the winter rains like rods,
Ye shall yet up spring as gods,
And those crumbling frames be crowned with delight—arise and sing!”

But the White Wings seemed to order me to follow as they flew,
As they floated like a cloud
Which was shaping in a shroud
Some new miracle of life, that of the mist and starlight grew,
Till the night wind waxing proud
Of the marvel and the mystery its gentle trumpet blew;
And a whisper
Clear and crisper,
As it gathered of all good
From the numbers
And the slumbers
Of the water and the wood,
Like the speaking of the Universal Spirit fell on me;
And it kindled me like fire,
With an infinite desire,
And those White Wings seemed a symbol of the better things to be;
While it trembled on my heart-strings like a finger on a lute,
Calling doers and the sayer
To the awful shrine of prayer,
Where the shining walls are worship and the shouts of passion mute,
“O ye peoples of the lands
Come with praises in your hands
That will wash away the brands,
And array you in the righteousness of the Divine repute.”

Thus I seemed to flit for ages over map-like sea and shore,

And uncharted earth and sky,
Where the White Wings rustled by
With the burden of the warning that to every clime they bore,
As from old eternity,
While the dry bones stirred behind them and the heavens flamed out before;
And I pondered
As I wandered
Through the chambers of the air,
Would my travel
Now unravel,
The dark riddles of despair?
But none answered, though I followed the one watchman of the night,
As he uncompanioned sped
On his task unpiloted
In the dreadfulness of twilight and his ministering flight;
And a ghostly presence bathed me in a rapture more than bliss,
Calling drudge alike and player
To the marriage feast of prayer,
When before the sob of penitence comes absolution's kiss—
“O ye sinners, who are lost
Or by gusts of craving tost,
The grim border can be crost,
And the White Wings yet shall carry you safe o'er the black abyss.”

And now ever when the evening falls and owls begin to sweep
On their broad majestic vans,
With another way than man's,
I go sailing with the White Wings through the spaces dim and deep,
And decipher the dark plans
Of the margin of the mysteries that haunt the worlds of sleep;

And no stigma
Of enigma
Now is bitter as of old,
And rate petals
Like rich metals
In the silent hours unfold;
I go sailing with those White Wings over mountain, moor and dale,
Over forest, fields and brooks
Which to me are open books,
And they sigh to me their secrets of the far and future tale;
But the Voice proclaims its teaching to the inward upturned eye,
Calling pilgrim soul and stayer
To themselves in solemn prayer,
While the Vision gives them seeing of the sacred euphrasy,
“O ye dead at length upstart,
And ye thoughts that death impart
From the white and new-washed heart
Take its colour, till each skeleton is a theophany.”