And he passed through the Gates with the light and the cloud of his song,
Dry-shod over Lethe he passed to the chasms of hell;
And the hosts of the dead made mock at him, crying, How long
Have we dwelt in the darkness, oh fool, and shall evermore dwell?
Did our lovers not love us? the grey skulls hissed in his face;
Were our lips not red? Were these cavernous eyes not bright?
Yet us, whom the soft flesh clothed with such roseate grace,
Our lovers would loathe if we ever returned to their sight!
Oh then, through the soul of the Singer, a pity so vast
Mixed with his anguish that, smiting anew on his lyre,
He caught up the sorrows of hell in his utterance at last,
Comprehending the need of them all in his own great desire.
V
And they that were dead, in his radiant music, remembered the dawn with its low deep crimson,
Heard the murmur of doves in the pine-wood, heard the moan of the roaming sea,
Heard and remembered the little kisses, in woods where the last of the moon yet swims on
Fragrant, flower-strewn April nights of young-eyed lovers in Arcady;
Saw the soft blue veils of shadow floating over the billowy grasses
Under the crisp white curling clouds that sailed and trailed through the melting blue;
Heard once more the quarrel of lovers above them pass, as a lark-song passes,
Light and bright, till it vanished away in an eye-bright heaven of silvery dew.
Out of the dark, ah, white as the Huntress, cold and sweet as the petals that crowned her,
Fair and fleet as a fawn that shakes the dew from the fern at break of day;
Wreathed with the clouds of her dusky hair that swept in a sun-bright glory around her,
On through the deserts of hell she came, and the brown air bloomed with the light of May.
On through the deserts of hell she came; for over the fierce and frozen meadows
Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;
So she arose from her grave in the darkness, and up through the wailing fires and shadows,
On by chasm and cliff and cavern, out of the horrors of death she came.
Then had she followed him, then had he won her, striking a chord that should echo for ever,
Had he been steadfast only a little, nor paused in the great transcendent song;
But ere they had won to the glory of day, he came to the brink of the flaming river
And ceased, to look on his love a moment, a little moment, and overlong.
VI