"Whence come to you this joyance and this strength"
It said, "this might of vision?
This will that measures all things to its length,
That cuts with calm decision?
"This blood within your veins, that is as wine
Which Destiny's self blesses.
Whence flows it, from what grape that is divine,
Or trodden from what presses?
"Do you so proud forget what hands have borne
You to the heights and crowned you?
Would you behold what sackcloth has been worn
That laurels may surround you?"...
"I would—O lips invisible! whose breath"—
I answered—"so arraigns me;
Whose voice is as a sound sent forth of Death,
And like to Death entrains me.
"I would! For if the flesh of me and soul
Are fibred with the ages,
My triumph is of them and manifold
Of all life's mystic stages."
So, forth they came—a vast ancestral line,
Upon my vision teeming,
All shapes whose natal semblance could affine
Them to me, faintly gleaming.
I knew them as I knew myself, and felt
The Day of each within me;
And so began to speak, the while they dwelt
About—they who had been me.
"My Sires," I said, "think you I have forgot
The fervor of your living?
How into me is moulded all you thought.
Of getting or of giving?
"Think you I do not feel my every drop
Of blood is as an ocean
In which are surging and will never stop
All things your hope gave motion?
"My senses, that are swift to take delight
And shrine it in their being,
Are they not born of all your faith, and bright
With all your bliss of seeing?