Panama and Other Poems Narrative and Occasional :: :: University of Virginia Library

The spear hath gone too deep; uplift me, friends,
That my last look upon the earth be clear.
I leave you on a disenchanted world,
Whence I am not unwilling to depart.
I would not tarry amid groves awaked
From the old mystery, and awe of leaves,
And sudden lights of beautiful faces,
Startled in holy greenness, or from forms
Naked, from pools disturbed, that dripping flee;
A grave and gentle spirit, powerful,
Hath brought in on us grey reality;
Making that beauty like a moon at dawn.
And the voice hath passed from the waves, the lamentation,
The human music from the Ægean thrown.

Ah, stricken are the horses of the Sun,
Faded is all the glory of Aurora;
Thunder is but a noise that was a voice.
Do ye not hear them still, the older gods,
Not all withdrawn, though sadly all withdrawing,
With melancholy soft departing voices?
O dispossessed, discrowned, deposed, dispersed!
And yet no lord of thunder or of flame,
Making this earth a second Semele,
Hath done this thing. A figure whist and still,
With woman-touch for all these troubled brows,
And healing whispers for humanity,
Wandering, but for a few followers,
Alone, and with no legions from the West,
Hath changed the ancient order of the world.
And yet I feel, even to the very bones,
This newer glory given to the world;
This sighing splendour and this ray of tears,
The upward labouring and the thorny path,
Ending—who knows?—in far invisible peace.
I can appraise, though with an alien will,
The sweat of blood, the thirst upon the tree,

The death that called the dead out of their graves,
To wander through the streets unrecognized,
I acquiesce, I bow down, and I pass.
O thou hast conquered, Galilean! I
Have fought my last against thee and I yield.
But ah, my frighted woods, and emptied groves,
Unhaunted meres, and thou great ocean dumb.
Lo! friends, one leans above me as I die,
The tender aspect of my Conqueror.