THE HERITAGE
O, say in the splendour of days that await us, the scope and desire of midnights to be,
The fruit of what powerful passions shall sate us, what Truths more effusive shall make us more free?
What new depths of the soul shall we seek and discover, what strength of the body, what heat of the heart?
In the dream of the seer, on the lute of the lover, what secrets shall yield and what melodies start?
Shall the days be more ample and florid before us, the large nights more pregnant of mystical birth?
What fresh voices shall peal what ineffable chorus, what beauty revive the old legends of earth?
The old ramparts of thought, shall they fall and be shattered? The old barriers of Love, shall they splendidly fade?
Shall the heavy, heaped dust of remembrance be scattered, our pleasures by loftier joys be repaid?
Since the rapture of Life is the longing that rages and Truth is the wisdom that kindles to flame,
So the judgments of God and the laws of the sages, man's virtue and evil, his praise and his blame,
Shall be fused in the Truth of what new revelation, dissolved in the floods of what limitless light?
As we forfeit our hearts to what new expectation, what senses shall thrill to what nameless delight?
In what wise shall the lips of our new loves grow fervent, what dreamed-of caresses lie warm in their hands?
Than the Gods who made Sapho their priestess and servant, what lovelier Gods shall inflict their commands?
When the altars of Love are heaped up over-measure, when the passion of love grows intense as despair,
What embrace shall afford what unbearable pleasure, on what breast, in the perfume and dusk of what hair?
And the elder grave Gods we have chosen and cherish, bright Gods of our youth that were sumptuous and young!—
Must they fail in the light of new vistas and perish as fail in long twilights the pulse of a song?
Shall perfections so distant they seemed a derision, the wild aspirations we dared not avow,
Be revealed in a solvent new vastness of vision, attained in a mightier moment than now?
Then what holier shrines shall receive our oblation, what visions reveal more ineffable skies?
As we pass from the creeds of our old adoration what marvels shall wake a more pregnant surmise?
What new virtues and sins shall complete and delight us, what tenderness thrill in our hearts like a song?
In what paths where what marvellous day-spring shall light us, what chorus of Heroes shall hail us along?
All the questions are vain yet the day never faileth to light the large dusk of the limitless past,
And desire forever in all ways availeth to bring all the largess we long for at last;
A new ecstasy wakes to a novel desire, to a vision more wise new horizons shall swell,
Tho' we will to ring round the huge heavens with fire or satiate such passions they know not in hell!
Tho' we will to be God all-receptive in heaven, yet our longing To Be is forever too small;
We are more than we know, as we ask shall be given, to ourselves and to only ourselves we are thrall;
With the sword of our will we may rend as a curtain the dusk of desires that wince and withhold,
Whatsoever we ask for the guerdon is certain, be it dust or the dawn-star, God's heaven or gold
