SEARCHINGS.

Soul, thou hast lived before. Thy wing
Hath swept the ancient folds of light
Which once wrapt stilly everything,
Before the advent of a Night.

O thou art blind and thou art dead
Unto the knowledge that was thine.
A longing and a dreamy dread
Alone oft shadow the divine.

Full loud calls past eternity,
But Lethe's murmur stills its roar,
The one vague truth that reaches thee
Is this—that thou hast lived before.

Home often comes some voice of eld
Confused and low—a broken surge
By fate and distance half withheld—
Rich in linked sadness like a dirge.

The muffled, great bell Silence clangs
His solemn call, and thou, O soul!
Dost stir in sense's torpid fangs,
Like the blind magnet, toward a pole.

The deep, vast, swelling organ-sound;
The cadence of an evening flute,
Bring oft those ancient joys around
To linger till the notes are mute.

And when thy hushéd breathing fills
The shrine of quiet reverence,
Then, too, a freeing angel stills
The clanking of the chains of sense.

But nearest to that former life
Another power calleth thee,
Away from care, away from strife,
Toward what thou wast—infinity.

And in thee, soul, the deepest chord
Thrills to a strain rung from above;
That strain is bound within a word,
A sole, sweet word, and it is—Love.

Love—yet it cannot set thee free
To sweep again those folds of light,
It torches but a part to thee
And dim, though fair. The rest is night.

As the fine structure of a man
Fits into life's great world, foremade,
So too it shadoweth the plan
Of ages hidden in the shade.

And thou hast lived before; hast known
The depth of every mystery,
Has dwelt in Nature, hid, alone
And winged the blue ætherial sea;

Hast looked upon the ends of space;
Hast visited each rolling star,—
Before Time measured forth his pace,
Scythe-armed, on a terrestrial war.