Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The fabled fire undying, in the shrine
Of Vesta is long darkened. Anxious steps
Have ceased to travel Delphi's steep, for lore
Prophetic, rendering an exchange of gold.
The intoxicating smoke through which appeared
The phantom-actors in the Mysteries
Hath vanished: brazen doors and sacredness
Have not preserved the altar and the shrine,
The Calathus and Cista; yea, the force
Of Truth, for sure those fables sheltered truths
Even of grandest import, hath scarce saved
A record of the symbol or the creed.

121

The spirit of the world that knows no sleep,
Whose pulse beats ever, whose attainment is
But as a step to better in the sphere
Of knowledge; hath much travelled since that day,
Still leaving ruin in the rear and sure
Oblivion even to the holy things;
For holier because juster rise before him.
But while I gaze on these god-worthy forms,
Fragments of wonder-working art, whose realm
Is bounded by the sense and wanders not,
The ancient gods become realities,
The veil of time is drawn aside again,
Nature and high philosophy have met,
Have been in mystical embrace united,
The Real and the Ideal blent—

I faint
Into a willing vision. O'er the fields
Of Enna strewn with flowers Proserpinè
Would fain have gathered, but that Pluto's haste
Bore her away unto her iron throne.

122

And lo! the weeping mother, with bare feet
And thickly-folded vest now seems to pass,
In her raised hand a white torch seems to burn,
And on her cheek a tear doth seem to fall
Yet falls not, an eternal thing, a dream,
A fable; are we not all searchers, still
Losing and seeking. And in dread repose
The sisters three, the everlasting thread
Weave, everlasting and yet mortal, since
Death is but re-birth, and the family
Of man encreasing, knows no death. The steeds
Of the sun-god from out the wavy plain
Erect their glorious heads, the god's large arms
Rise over, ruling them with power divine.
All these, fragmental and time-worn are here,
Time-worn and headless, yet no less supreme,
Approaching even to realize the Will
Of Nature, . . . to produce an archetype!
Aha! I am awake: the shuffling feet
Of idle crowds sight-seeing in mine ears,
Surmising and admiring! I could hide

123

My face within my hands, and as a child
Weeps when his card-built palaces have fallen,
Because he knows he cannot build in power,
So could I weep in presence of these forms;
I am a child amidst a world of gods!

The angels on the plain of Bethlehem
Have sung good will to man and peace with heaven
Since the great sculptor and the faith he served
Were among living things. The arms of Rome
Have been put forth insatiate, on all lands
Glittering in brass and plunder, and again
Have they shrunk in, rebuked by death. The tribes
Of the dark North have crossed the Danube's waves
Ice-bound. The Cross has triumphed over all!
The bold discoverer a new world has found,
England has spread itself from zone to zone,
Time hath grown rich with good gifts manifold,
And analytic souls from year to year,
Torture new sciences to serve like slaves,
'Till now we live in light, and though each torch

124

Is rank and earthly, let us not deny
The mighty Hope that every coming age
Essays to realize. But through all change,
The harmonies of nature must remain,
The voice of these remain,—
A revelation of the perfect man
As at the first he was, and at the last
He may be: as he must be in the spirit,
If our Humanity hath aught divine,
And to himself and to his fellow men
He would unfold it in its purity!