TIME
Whence the way and whither wending?
Seeks hot youth, till eld descending,
Leaves unread the secret pending.
What is Life? Truth answers never;
Darkly flows the secret river,
But its springs are hid for ever.
What is Truth? Man’s long endeavour
Finds the web but not the weaver:
Sleeps the riddle none may sever.
As it was in Time’s beginning,
Then, as now, while Fate is spinning
Man her clue would still be winning.
My soul knew rest no more that day.
I heard Time’s voice sink far away,
And long did muse till light was gone,
Still sitting in my porch alone.
Strange thoughts like flashes went and came,
And dreams of love, and hopes of fame,
With dim desires that inly burned;
Dead hopes that rose again and yearned
To follow still that unknown quest,
And failing, fluttered back to rest.
Then had my soul a vision strange,
As far in spirit did I range,
And I beheld a far dim plain,
Dyed in day’s last Tyrean stain,
And through its dark and desert ground
A gleaming vein of water wound,
Where lonely piles of ruin old
Loomed vast, with hollow chambers cold,
Where horror dwelt with night and death,
And filled they were with ghostly breath.
But there amid the gathering glooms,
Among the temples and the tombs,
One wandered in a pilgrim’s guise,
Who fixed afar his wistful eyes;
His footsteps kept the river’s side,
A glowing lamp his feet did guide,
That shone upon that desert’s dearth,
As like a star there fall’n to earth;
And moving through the twilight dim,
By shattered arch and column slim,
With staff and scrip he kept his way,
Among those wrecks of ancient day.
Far, far upon that desert land,
Half buried in her grave of sand,
The ancient head of Egypt rose;
And, still sublime in death’s repose,
Great Memnon kept his awful throne
Outwatching day and night alone:
And where the Greek laid stone on stone
The faces of his gods were shown,
When to the world—a youth—there came
Fair Wisdom, Power, and Beauty’s dame,
Heré, not Pallas, had his choice
But Aphrodité won his voice.
The crumbling strength of mighty Rome,
Her grave, her cradle, and her home;
There stood the emblems of her reign—
The Arch that would the world sustain,
And still doth span in legioned range
The gulf of time, the waves of change.
Long stood the Pilgrim here at gaze,
As lost in thought of antique days,
As far his searching eyes could scan
Beneath the age-worn arches’ span.
He marked each age’s builded pile
Loom dimly down the endless aisle,
Where shone the winding waters’ thread,
A wandering life among the dead,
Until his sight no more could trace
Its courses from their hidden place,
Wrapt in the clinging mists that shroud
The trackless mountains dim with cloud;
But still his spirit found no home
Beneath the broad eternal dome.
At last the Pilgrim turned and sighed,
Nor stayed he where a cross beside
Marked how a greater power and pride
Did conquer Rome, and still doth bide.
Full many a stone about that ground
Made stumbling, but of flowers were found
None save the sanguined poppy’s hue
Between still sleep and death that grew.
The Pilgrim stayed for sleep nor rest,
As bent upon some hidden quest;
Nor turned he from his painful way
Where folk made feast and holiday
Beneath fair vines and fruited trees,
As pipe, and dance, and song them please.
He seemed the world of men to shun,
And joyed when he a wood had won,
Sweet cloistered green, and roofed above,
Where soft he heard the wooing dove,
And sound of wandering water near;
He drank its crystal cup and clear,
And kept his path beside the stream
Till he beheld white pillars gleam.
He passed from green to blossomed boughs
That compassed fair a secret house;
Still music drew him to the door,
Swift beat his heart, and trembling more,
He entered, to a gold dim space
Flame-lit before an altar daïs,
Rose-garlanded, most fair and meet,
And all the air was still and sweet,
But over these in fairer case
Shone the clear semblance of a face.
He knelt before that altar stone,
The anthem soothed his heart’s faint tone,
And seraph voices high and soft,
In measured cadence quired aloft,
Or sailed in tempest gusts of sound
When passion’s music shook the ground.
Filled was the Pilgrim’s soul and bowed,
Till in his stress he cried aloud:
“O Love! This is thy holy place,
Give me, I pray, my lady’s grace!”
