 | The Unknown Madonna and Other Poems |  |
4
DANTE'S GRAVE.
There is an awe, I know not whence or why,
About the graves where sleep the mighty dead,
There is an instinct guides our feet to track
The path they travelled; these have led me here.
This is Ravenna, in the midnight hour
Of windless silence, the blank windows stare
Like eyes that time has blinded through the night
From ruins and half-ruins, and my step
Startles the haunted echoes. It is here!
Vast in the shadows, San Francesco looms
Against the quick Italian stars, one lamp
Confirms the cloister's gloom, a willow tree
Droops to a grill of iron, and within
Dark cypress clusters: this is Dante's grave!
About the graves where sleep the mighty dead,
There is an instinct guides our feet to track
The path they travelled; these have led me here.
This is Ravenna, in the midnight hour
Of windless silence, the blank windows stare
Like eyes that time has blinded through the night
From ruins and half-ruins, and my step
Startles the haunted echoes. It is here!
Vast in the shadows, San Francesco looms
Against the quick Italian stars, one lamp
Confirms the cloister's gloom, a willow tree
Droops to a grill of iron, and within
Dark cypress clusters: this is Dante's grave!
Far from the Tuscan mountains and the vale
Loved with a patriot's passion, here he died,
Unpardoned, unforgiving, unsubdued.
Oh great sad constant soul that stood for God
In a wild world of discord, though you climbed
Steep stairs of alien palaces, and knew
How salt the bread of exiles, failing friends
And misconceived ideals,—where are they
Who sat in the high places! Time has made
Thy scorn their only monument, and dimmed
Each lesser lustre round thy lonely star!
Not all unrecompensed on earth! For thine
The faith which ventures the ideal love,
The crown which envy cannot clutch, the faith
Which feels how vainly venomed arrows strike
The flawless armour of a pure intent;
And the ideal love leaned down from heaven
To win thee from false idols, and reveal
Tier after tier to the last murky deep
The doom that passes pardon, urged thee mount
Hard ridge by ridge the penitential hill,
Through the terrestrial Eden, to attain
The mysteries of the rose of Paradise.
Loved with a patriot's passion, here he died,
Unpardoned, unforgiving, unsubdued.
5
In a wild world of discord, though you climbed
Steep stairs of alien palaces, and knew
How salt the bread of exiles, failing friends
And misconceived ideals,—where are they
Who sat in the high places! Time has made
Thy scorn their only monument, and dimmed
Each lesser lustre round thy lonely star!
Not all unrecompensed on earth! For thine
The faith which ventures the ideal love,
The crown which envy cannot clutch, the faith
Which feels how vainly venomed arrows strike
The flawless armour of a pure intent;
And the ideal love leaned down from heaven
To win thee from false idols, and reveal
Tier after tier to the last murky deep
The doom that passes pardon, urged thee mount
Hard ridge by ridge the penitential hill,
Through the terrestrial Eden, to attain
The mysteries of the rose of Paradise.
Oh stern of tenure to thy purpose high!
Oh, hard to love, compelling to revere!
For all the wanderings of thy exile feet
Be earth's remorse our reverence and our hope!
Oh, hard to love, compelling to revere!
6
Be earth's remorse our reverence and our hope!
For hope is child of wisdom, and despair
The bastard of half-knowledge. O'er this grave
The soft quick stars have climbed and set again,
The rose he loved has flushed the morning east,
The snows along the back of Apennine
Have blanched and thawed through five long hundred years,
And man has marched not vainly the steep road
Proclaimed by priests and poets. Soon, aye now,
We almost need thy grisly hell no more!
We have outgrown the visionary doom
That waits on sin's hereafter, Love not Fear
Urges our progress up the purging hill,
Where man must answer for his fellow man:
And new ideals have set heaven so high
We miss thy clearer vision, nor complain!
Our years are dim with struggle, as were thine,
But lit with gleams of promise, where at times
The herald watchers on the heights discern
Far peaks of that first Eden which is spread
Nearest the confines of the light of God.
The bastard of half-knowledge. O'er this grave
The soft quick stars have climbed and set again,
The rose he loved has flushed the morning east,
The snows along the back of Apennine
Have blanched and thawed through five long hundred years,
And man has marched not vainly the steep road
Proclaimed by priests and poets. Soon, aye now,
We almost need thy grisly hell no more!
We have outgrown the visionary doom
That waits on sin's hereafter, Love not Fear
Urges our progress up the purging hill,
Where man must answer for his fellow man:
And new ideals have set heaven so high
We miss thy clearer vision, nor complain!
Our years are dim with struggle, as were thine,
But lit with gleams of promise, where at times
The herald watchers on the heights discern
Far peaks of that first Eden which is spread
Nearest the confines of the light of God.
7
Ah, lonely city of the marshy mead,
Left lonelier by the ever-ebbing sea,
Keep thou thy guest and guard his sacred sleep:
The poet's refuge, be the poet's grave!
Well rests he here, dead reed of deathless song,
Where silence feeds on echoes of mute names,
Shrouded in memories, famous and forlorn!
Left lonelier by the ever-ebbing sea,
Keep thou thy guest and guard his sacred sleep:
The poet's refuge, be the poet's grave!
Well rests he here, dead reed of deathless song,
Where silence feeds on echoes of mute names,
Shrouded in memories, famous and forlorn!
Ravenna.
| The Unknown Madonna and Other Poems | |