AT NOTRE DAME
I
O odour of incense, pride of purple and gold,
Burst of music and praise, and passion of flute and pipe!
O voices of silver o'er-sweet, and soothing antiphonal chant!
O Harmony, ancient, ecstatic, a-throb to the echoing roof,
With tremulous roll of awakened reverberant tubes, and thunder of sound!
And illusion of mystical song and outclangour of jubilant bell,
And glimmer of gold and taper, and throbbing, insistent pipe—
If song and emotion and music were all—
Were it only all!
II
For see, dark heart of mine,
How the singers have ceased and gone!
See, how all of the music is lost and the lights are low,
And how, as our idle arms, these twin ineloquent towers
Grope up through the old inaccessible Night to His stars!
How in vain we have stormed on the bastions of Silence with sound!
How in vain with our music and song and emotion assailed the Unknown,
How beat with the wings of our worship on Earth's imprisoning bars!
For the pinions of Music have wearied, the proud loud tubes have tired,
Yet still grim and taciturn stand His immutable stars,
And, lost in the gloom, to His frontiers old I turn
Where glimmer those sentinel fires,
Beyond which, Dark Heart, we two
Some night must steal us forth,
Quite naked, and alone!
THE PILOT
I lounge on the deck of the river-steamer,
Homeward bound with its load,
Churning from headland to headland,
Through moonlight and silence and dusk.
And the decks are alive with laughter and music and singing,
And I see the forms of the sleepers
And the shadowy lovers that lean so close to the rail,
And the romping children behind,
And the dancers amidships.
But high above us there in the gloom,
Where the merriment breaks like a wave at his feet,
Unseen of lover and dancer and me,
Is the Pilot, impassive and stern,
With his grim eyes watching the course.