The poetical works of Edward Rowland Sill :: :: University of Virginia Library

120

They think me daft, who nightly meet
My face turned starward, while my feet
Stumble along the unseen street;

But should man's thoughts have only room
For Earth, his cradle and his tomb,
Not for his Temple's grander gloom?

And must the prisoner all his days
Learn but his dungeon's narrow ways
And never through its grating gaze?

Then let me linger in your sight,
My only amaranths! blossoming bright
As over Eden's cloudless night.

The same vast belt, and square, and crown,
That on the Deluge glittered down,
And lit the roofs of Bethlehem town!

Ye make me one with all my race,
A victor over time and space,
Till all the path of men I pace.

121

Far-speeding backward in my brain
We build the Pyramids again,
And Babel rises from the plain;

And climbing upward on your beams
I peer within the Patriarchs' dreams,
Till the deep sky with angels teems.

My Comforters!—Yea, why not mine?
The power that kindled you doth shine,
In man, a mastery divine;

That Love which throbs in every star,
And quickens all the worlds afar,
Beats warmer where his children are.

The shadow of the wings of Death
Broods over us; we feel his breath:
“Resurgam” still the spirit saith.

These tired feet, this weary brain,
Blotted with many a mortal stain,
May crumble earthward—not in vain.

With swifter feet that shall not tire,
Eyes that shall fail not at your fire
Nearer your splendors I aspire.