University of Virginia Library

V

The kine-herd's pipe comes home beneath the hill
Along Vergente's upland valley
Blocked by the snowcapt mountains; kine and sheep
Tawny and dark, slow following, graze their fill,
Neck-bells wander round the bastions steep,
Wandering fingers teach the stops at will
Melodies cool as water, soft as sleep. . . .
Dark heavens, that take no part in all our stir,
Dark heavens, that arbiter
The fellow vault of fire, the brain of man,
Now from that height and depth—your fastness
Confer on the ephemeral your vastness!
O stream of time, the sunrise-colour'd flood
Alive with tremour of ten thousand stars
Dissolved therein like memories in the blood,
Arouse us at this dawn to wake indeed!
But for the instant a street-door unbars
And lets be heard the storming multitude
Trampling the unjust fortress-prison doors,
Make us alive to those whom we succeed!
Make us alive to our inheritors!
We must not fail the hour for which they bleed,
But hear, within, the Pure and the Outlasting
Blow their sharp summons through the soul,
To become, in our turn, paean and forecasting.
Now on our ears, through gates of Death and Pain,
Let the rhythms incommensurable roll,—
And change. When we too must take up the strain
We join, above the tempests and expanses
That blindly move in ecstasies and trances,
Into an inner rite, which is not blind,
Where equanimity may reign,
The grave and the fraternal rite of Mind.