 | Three Hundred Sonnets |  |
22
ZOROASTER.
Fathomless past! what precious secrets lieGulph'd in thy depths;—how brave a mingled throng,
Fathers of wisdom, bards of mighty song,
Hearts gushing with warm hopes and feelings high,
Lovers and sages, prophets priests and kings,
Sleep nameless in thy drear obscurity:
Fathomless past!—the vague conception brings,
Amid thick-coming thoughts of olden things,
Hoar Zoroaster,—as he walk'd sometime
In shadowy Babel, and around him stood
The strangely-mitred earnest multitude
Listening the wonders of his speech sublime:
Hail, mantled ghost, I track thy light from far,
On the chaotic dark an ‘exiled star.’
| Three Hundred Sonnets | |